Traveling with family can be tiresome, monotonous, and stressful. Placing a hand held electronic game into a child’s hands is one way of relieving some of these problems, but it’s not very ‘family friendly’. With society today offering less family time together by pushing gadget oriented entertainment towards kids, and the cost of living forcing most parents to work longer hours, we need to take as many opportunities as possible to interact as a family. That’s why having travel games for car trips are a must!
Travel Games For Car Trips
A road trip is one of the ultimate ways of doing this. With everyone literally forced to stay together in the car, you have the perfect opportunity to bond and re-unite with some old fashioned car games. And while some might moan and groan at the mention of them, when they actually do start joining in (and they will, because what else is there for them to do after all?) you’ll find everyone enjoying the time they are spending together! And the added bonus? You will be learning about each other and the places you are going on the way! So, here are a few games to start you off!
I spy
Yes it’s old, but for young kids it’s a classic that they love. For anyone that may not have played this as a child, here’s how it works! Someone starts by picking an object everyone can see in the car. Then they say ‘I spy with my little eye, something that is’ . . . and here they will insert the color of the object. Everyone takes turning guessing the thing that it is until someone gets it right and then it’s their turn.
Sing-a-Song
You can take this literally and sing whatever songs you like – whether it be popular music of today or camp songs – or you can twist it up a bit and do your own thing. Choose a popular tune to any song and have everyone make up a line as you go. This one usually gets sillier and sillier as you sing and often ends up with everyone laughing and having a good time.
The ‘What am I?’ game
Somebody picks an object, person, or animal in their head and says ‘What am I?’. Then someone else starts with the question “Are you a person, animal, or thing?” After that you ask questions to try and guess what the person is. Ask things like, “Do you have a tail? What color are you? Are you used every day?” Basically any questions that will help you figure out what they are.
Name that place
On road trips you generally pass through many, many places. Cities, towns, villages, corners with names given to them, etc. Whenever you see a sign naming one of these places, everyone has to make up a story about how the town was named. Be as creative and imaginative as possible! For example, a place named ‘Otterville’ could have some outrageous story about Otters.
Car Bingo
You can buy store bought cardboard versions or make your own on the computer. It’s like regular bingo! Only instead of numbers in the boxes there are pictures of items you would see on the road while traveling, such as a stop sign, an orange workers cone, etc. The prize can be whatever you want. (Perhaps a better seat in the car after the next stop?)
These are just a few suggestions for car travel games to play on a road trip. If you want to find more try asking family, friends, teachers, or doing an internet search!
This would all be great games that I would enjoy playing with children on road trips
Great ideas, kids have to occupied or they get bored and start moaning. We all had a lot of fun playing I spy on long road trips and in Europe we used to guess which country cars came from and in Germany which ‘province’ all of which were on the licence plates.
Awesome!
My favorites from when I was a kid were I SPY and PUNCH BUG
I also loved playing I SPY when I was young.
Lots of good old car trip entertainment, sure to keep everyone engaged.
Car bingo sounds like a lot of fun