Filling in the time while travelling in the car with car games is a free and fun activity, however I Spy can get a little tedious! Here are some other fun car games to play.
Spelling Bee
Either show a picture or say a word and let the children determine the letter that makes the beginning sound. If it is one child’s turn and they do not know, they may call on a friend to help. For older children, choose words based on your whereabouts for them to spell in full.
Going on a trip
“I am going on a trip and I am going to pack” is a fun memory game where each person adds to the previous responses.
The first person says, “I’m taking a trip and I am going to pack …” and then fills in the rest of the sentence. It could be a piece of clothing, or a toy, or whatever they choose.
Each person then repeats what the previous people have said, and adds their own selection to the end and so on. As the game progresses it gets harder and harder to remember everything that was packed!
Alphabet memory
This is similar to the game above but uses the alphabet. The first person starts with the letter A and say “A is for —” filling in the blank with any word beginning with the letter A such as apple, alphabet, animal, etc. The second person then does the letter B, but must also remember what A was! So, they say “A is for apple and B is for boy”. Then, the third person starts with A and B and then adds in their suggestion for C, ie “A is for apple, B is for boy and C is for caterpillar” and so on. You can also use variations for older kids, like “My sandwich has …” and working your way through the alphabet for fillings – make them as yummy or as gross as you like!
Guess what I am
For this game you need someone who is delegated to think of something and then answer questions from the other participants. This person needs to begin the game by stating that they are a person, place or thing.
The other people in the car then need to ask questions and try to guess what the person is based on their answers. People may ask things such as; Are you an animal? How many legs do you have? What colour are you? Answers can only be in the form of “yes”, “no”, or numbers, colours, etc.
If a person guesses correctly, it’s their turn to think of something and answer questions.
Name that Tune
How many notes will it take your family or child to name that tune? This is a great game for families to play together. One person thinks of a song and then starts to hum the tune – the first one to guess the song correctly is the next to choose a song and hum.
For younger children, you might need to suggest a few bedtime lullabies (twinkle, twinkle little star) or even Christmas Carols to help them along.
A to Z
The objectives of this game is to complete the alphabet first. Each player searches the letters on billboards, trucks, license plates, buildings and anything else in view and shout out your letter and point. Once a letter has been claimed other players cannot use the same letter. Make it harder by limiting the game to only license plates or signs for older children. Whoever gets to Z first wins.
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Love these..my girls just started doing the hum a tune..its pretty fun… thanks for the tips
We always used to do eye spy which is a favourite or else singing songs – so I think name that tune will become another favourite.
Wow I love these ideas I have not heard of most of these and when we are going on a long trip we definitely need to do these some are easier than others but I guess the more you practice it will become easier for us all to do.
I love the spelling bee idea, its a fantastic way to improve their spelling and have fun. Hopefully all that thinking will keep them nice and quite too lol
Ohhh, all great additions I will have to remember for next car trip! Our favourite is eye-spy. But we do “starts with the sound” because we have a 6 year old and she doesn’t always know how to spell something. It works pretty good.