Guest Author - Susan Thompson
Ahhhh…Family vacation! Who doesn’t love going on vacation? Well I guess that depends on how many kids you have and how you are getting there. If you are going by plane or train, chances are it won’t be a long trip, but if you are traveling by car, even a two hour ride can seem like forever if you have kids. Here are some tried and true games for car rides. I hope you enjoy them and your vacation.
Yellow Car – This is a great game for most ages. The only thing you have to know is what the color yellow is. All you have to do is be on the look out for yellow cars. When you see a yellow car shout “yellow car.” If you are the first to spot it, you get 5 points. Yellow Hummers are worth 15 points. In my car, if there is a tie, both people get the points, and school busses and taxis’ don’t count.
The Movie Game – Good game for ages 4-5 and up. One person thinks of a movie and only gives the letters in the title. Example: Jaws would be the “J”, Rugrats the Movie would be RTM. You get one clue as to what the movie is about. The person who guesses the movie gets a turn to be “it”. This game also works well with television shows.
The ABC Game – There are many variations to this game. One way to play is to start with the letter A and go through the alphabet finding letters along the ride on signs, trucks, etc... You can also make it more difficult by saying that you can only use license plates. The third variation is to find words that begin with the letter you are on. The last way that I know to play is to use any of these variations, but go backwards through the alphabet obviously starting with Z.
I Spy – Pick one person to start. That person chooses an object inside the car to give clues about then says” I spy, with my little eye something that is……” The other people in the car take guesses as to what is being spied. The person who guesses correctly goes next. The only rule we have on this is that it has to be an object in the car. You be surprised at how many things there are in your car!!
Normally I don’t suggest the use of electronics. I think if you are in the car, you have a captive audience and it will amaze you how much even older kids will get involved when they are removed from pier pressure. I do advise electronics for very long trips. We drove 1500 miles once and would have gone crazy if we didn’t have the tv/vcr combo to break the monotony!
One more thing I did that the kids really enjoyed, was wrap some surprises that could be opened at certain times during the trip. They were not real expensive surprises – at the beginning of the trip was a box of colored pencils and a coloring book, another was a pack of M&M’s, stuff like that.
Well I hope these little tips make your vacation an enjoyable one, and as always, if you have other tips to share please email them to me so I can share them in a future article.
