I recently took a car trip with my sons (ages 4 and 6) to Branson. We decided to do it this time without the movies we often attach to the back of the car seats. We did, however, bring along even better toys, Grandma and Grandpa.
In doing so, I remembered all the games and things we used to play when we were kids, before video games and DVD players. (Full disclosure: we did allow the video games, but the game they played most was two-person chess on the iPad.)
Here are some car games I learned to love:
1. Tic-Tac-Toe: It’s that simple. We just give the kids a notebook and let them play the old-fashioned game.
2. Dot game: First, make several rows of evenly spaced dots. Each player takes turns drawing a line between a pair of dots. The dots must be adjacent, but can be anywhere on the page. The goal is to close four sides of a box. Each time you create a box, write your initial in it to get a point. The player who creates the most boxes wins.
3. I spy: One person in the car looks around and chooses an object (it can be in or out of the car). The guessers are given one clue: "I spy with my little eye something that is (insert first letter of object’s name, the object’s color, or maybe the object’s shape.)" Guessers try to figure out the object, and the winner gets to create his or her own mystery object.
4. Who would win in a fight: This is a game my husband created with the kids when they were younger. We pick superheroes (Superman vs. Batman), Star Wars characters (Yoda vs. 1,000 battle droids), animals (a hippo or a crocodile), dinosaurs (a Diplodocus or a Spinosaurus). Each of us picks our winner and explains why.
5. Scavenger hunt: I haven’t tried this, but a friend of mine recommends it. You start the trip with a list of things the kids should find. Try to make some specific to where you are going; others more generic (they might include a person on a cell phone, a dog, a church, railroad tracks, a red car, etc).
6. Alphabet game: Go through the alphabet with a theme. For example, we try to match each letter of the alphabet to a hockey team or player or each letter to an animal.
7. Good old license plate game or bingo games (see related stories).
8. Mazes: I buy activity books with mazes. They can entertain my kids for quite some time.
9. Books: Being confined in a car is a great excuse for kids to practice their reading. Or, try reading a story to them.
10. Counting cows: We used to play a version of this on the route from Scott City, Mo., to Puxico, Mo. My sister on one side and me on the other, we’d count cows. But if you pass a cemetery on your side of the road, you have to start over.
