Car trip - or family road trip - on your calendar?
Be prepared to keep whining to a minimum and fun to the max with my 5 favorite crazy-fun games for the road.
1. The Silly Sentence Add-On Game.
This game starts with a single person
uttering a single sentence and generally ends in a free-for-all laugh fest among the tongue-tied passengers.
This game is great for getting everyone’s mind off the clock and the odometer, and on listening to each other.
My 10-year-old daughter, her friend Stephanie, and I made a 40-mile trip to Disneyland recently. Here’s a partial of our silly game:
“The car in front of us is taupe. It’s a Yukon. Stephanie is wearing a bandana. There’s a really big plane flying into LAX. The call box is blue. There are surfboards on the car in front of us. Lyndsay (she had choked while laughing and drinking from her water bottle so this too became a sentence), are you okay? Yes, I’m fine. Happy birthday, Lyndsay. The Disneyland castle needs to be repainted. The sky needs to be taller. I really want that limo in front of us. Put a sock in it, Stephanie. Lyndsay is loony….”
2. Counting Cows.
Things get crazy when you pass a field full of ‘em.
If you pass a cemetery on your side, you lose all your cows, but only if the other side calls it: “Cows buried.”
Pretty much, you can make a game out of counting anything.
Try billboards, red signs, you get the picture.
3. The License Plate Game.
Print a U.S. map from the Internet and have the kids color in the states as they see a license plate from each.
Add to the interactive factor by having the kids (and adults) call out or `claim' a license plate - requiring everyone else in the vehicle to spot and call their own plate from the state.
4. Navigaton Challenge.
Let older kids help navigate.
Give ‘em a copy of the road map on a clipboard and a highlighter to chart your progress.
You can award `points" (or the winner's choice of restaurant for dinner on the road) to the passenger who can correctly chart the vehicle's next interstate highway, freeway or exit correctly - before you take it.
5. Talking (Yes, talking can be a game).
Each person gets to choose a topic every 15 minutes. (My choice is usually silence.)
Or you could all listen to someone else talk.
Bring along books on tape or a CD the whole family will enjoy.
