Car trips games

[Tinkermommy]

Hi,

Since it's summer and "car trip" season thought we could share some ideas on games/activities for the family.

Besides electronics and videos, we like
- The license plate game (thinking of getting a book with stickers this time)
- I spy
- Mad libs (kids LOVE this one)

I would love some new options. Even games for just my kids to play. Anything not to hear "she's on my side!"

 

[Gumbo4x4]

We play Farkel. It's a dice (er, numbered cube) game. We roll in a shoebox lid. Rules can be found online

 

[FergieTCat]

Whenever anyone sees a yellow car (cannot be a bus, truck or taxi cab), they call "Score!" The person who says it first gets a point. Whoever has the most points wins. You can play for however long you'd like (1/2 hour, 1 hour, entire road trip).

My friend's 8 year old loves this game. My friend taught it to me on a "girls road trip" and we had a good time trying to outscore each other. There aren't that many yellow cars out there on the road.

 

[HM]

ABC game. As a team we start looking for the letter A on road signs and billboards and work our way down the alphabet. We usually go for a good three rounds before quitting this game. It really makes time go fast.

 

[PigletsPal2]

When we took long road trips when I was a child, my mother's favorite game was "Silence." In those days, cars had bench seats in the front and we sat shotgun, middle front, driver, and three kids in the backseat. The sister who could keep quiet the longest got to sit up front at the next rest/gas stop. Unfortunately, I rarely won. My baby sister usually won because she'd fall asleep almost as soon as my dad backed out of the driveway.

I don't think this game would fly today!

Queen Colleen

 

[Southernmiss]

Whenever anyone sees a yellow car (cannot be a bus, truck or taxi cab), they call "Score!" The person who says it first gets a point. Whoever has the most points wins. You can play for however long you'd like (1/2 hour, 1 hour, entire road trip).

My friend's 8 year old loves this game. My friend taught it to me on a "girls road trip" and we had a good time trying to outscore each other. There aren't that many yellow cars out there on the road.

My family plays a version of this. They call yellow cars "Bingo". For fun, we have added different names for other colored cars. Parcheesi for orange, yahtzee for purple, etc.

They also look for VW bugs and call them "punch buggies" and punch another person in the arm. I always bow out, they punch too hard!! We called them beetles and the color when I was a kid "Beetle blue" etc.

 

[NHdisneylover]

We like the "my name is" game. You go through the alphabet and make a sentence with "my name is ______ my brother/sister is _____ we live in ________ and we sell ____________.

To make it more challenging we often have themes/ So, "A" with a Disney theme might be:

My name is Ariel, my brother's name is Aladdin, we live in Adventureland and we sell apples (not poisoned!)

etc.



The radio game (great with teens). The goal is to be the first person in the car to correctly guess the artist of a song when a new one comes on the radio. We keep track of points and have a lot of fun with this one.

 

[bjscheel]

Around here, a lot of the license plates have three letters and three numbers. We'll take the three letters and try to think of a fun phrase that starts with those three letters- example license plate with letters ALZ could be "Allison Loves Zebras". Or think of a word that has all three of those letters in it, in order.

We also have a couple of activities involving semis. We try to find a semi in every color of the rainbow. Purple and yellow can be harder to find. One summer, DD tallied semis by color all summer. At the end of the summer, she made a chart and we found out which colors were most common.

I also bought a game on Amazon called Rubberneckers. We don't necessarily play by all the rules, and we skip the cards that want you to get people in other vehicles to react to you! You could make your own basic version- mainly you get points for finding certain things like the name of a US President (except for Ford!); a weathervane; basketball hoop; boat; car with 3 or more bumper stickers; etc.

Finally, we play Guess the Disney Character. One person thinks of a character and may or may not give a hint, depending on our mood. The rest ask questions until we figure it out.

 

[Frantasmic]

ZIP: Each player has a side of the car. As you are traveling, when you see a horse, you call out ZIP.

Person with most points by agreed time wins.

You can call out ahead of time, but if you call out too far in the distance and your horse turns out to be another animal, say a cow, you lose your accumulated points so far.

Also, if you pass a cemetery, you lose your points.

 

[PigletsPal2]

Another silly made-up game that DH and I play is called "Volvo." When we bought our first Volvo 12 years ago, we hardly ever saw any other ones on the highway, so we always remarked on it when we did. This evolved into a contest to see who could count the most Volvos on a trip. Then DH bought his pride and joy Durango, named "Buster," so he started counting Busters.

We frequently travel from up-scale Fairfax county in Virginia where DH is working as a contractor to West Virginia to see my sister; it's interesting to note that I get a lot of Volvos in Virginia and he gets lots of Busters in West Virginia. But it evens out on the trip back.

My DDs (lovingly) say it doesn't take much to amuse idiots and small children.

Queen Colleen

 

[RunningGirl]

The two we always played were camping and grocery store.

Camping - you take turns saying "I'm going camping and I'm taking _____" and name what you're taking. The next person has to "take" your item and their item. As you go around the list gets longer and longer and you must name all the items in order.

Grocery store - very simple. You just name items that you can find in a grocery store that begin with any particular letter. You have to name one new item each time it's your turn (but not repeat everyone else's like in camping). For example, if the letter were "b" you could say bananas, beets, beef, blueberries, ...

I also used to make up car bingo sheets for the kids based on where we were going. I just found images online of things we'd be passing (silos, bridges, cows, or more specifically St Louis Arch) and they had to find them.

 

[Scrappy_Tink]

They also look for VW bugs and call them "punch buggies" and punch another person in the arm.

We still play that game....it's getting harder and harder to find VW Bugs though!

We always play the ABC game with the road signs.

My sons would always try to get the truckers to blow their horns by tugging an imaginary cord in the air when passing.

When we go under an overpass or tunnel, you have to lick how many fingers there are people in the car (three people in car, you lick three fingers) and stick them to the roof of the car, so the bridge doesn't collapse (weird, I know)

I'd always played the "Quiet game" with my boys...only I paid money.