Most Fun Games to Play on a Road Trip
Have some of these road trip games ready to play in the car to make any drive more fun. We do a lot of driving and I’ve found the best way to keep everyone happy is to have a few conversation games and other good road trip games to play at the ready. If bickering begins, I can start one of our favorite games bring back peace to the car ride.
Not only do road trip games keep kids happy, when we play these games we make memories and build connection – one thing I love about traveling. I have nothing against watching a movie or playing a video game sometimes on a long trip, but I value the fun we’ve had as a family with these more interactive games for the car.
Our Favorite Games to Play on a Road Trip
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Conversation Prompts (asking irresistible questions) – Whether you print a list or just read through a few ideas and remember a handful of them, having some conversation starters at the ready makes for a quick way to end squabbles in the back seat. It’s a lot more fun to answer interesting questions than to annoy your siblings.
Battleships on Paper – Bringing games to play in the car that have lots of little pieces makes for a mess, but you can find printable paper Battleship games (or draw your own on graph paper) and enjoy this game that teaches both graphing skills and strategy.
Coloring – So long as you don’t leave out crayons to melt (we favor colored pencils while on the road) coloring is a fun activity while driving. You can download some fun coloring pages and a maze in my printable activities pack here.
Mad Libs – This word game leads to lots of laughs and humorously teaches a little grammar along the way.
Take Photos (scavenger hunt) – If your kids have a tablet (my boys each saved up and purchased a Kindle Fire, which we’ve been happy with), or if you have a kids’ camera, it can be fun to ask them to document their journey. You get a unique look into their world when you see what they enjoy photographing. You can turn it into a game by making it a road trip scavenger hunt and giving a list of items to photograph.
Mental Math – Occasionally the kids enjoy answering math challenges such as practicing multiplication facts, calculating gas mileage, or figuring out how long it will take to get to our destination. Take a look at the mental math games here for ideas.
Be the Navigator – There are all sorts of ways to play this. For the younger kids I’ll draw a path with squares for each 25 miles we drive – they get to put a sticker on the map for each of those way points. This gives a nice visual of our progress. We got a pack of car stickers for each kid to make the miles pass more quickly on a 600 mile journey we took one summer.
For older kids you can print a Google map of your route, follow the route in an Atlas, or have them find directions on your phone. On short trips around town I’ll play the game “How do we get home from here?” and let one of my kids direct our drive as best they can.
I Spy – This is the classic car game. I find the trick when playing with younger kids is to not make it complicated – simply state what you’re seeing (shape, colors) let them guess, and take turns. You can also vary it by looking for a specific color. Eboo make Travel Bingo Cards that work well for playing I Spy while you drive.
Alphabet Game – This can be another look-out-the window game if you’re trying to spot something starting with each letter of the alphabet, or play it by coming up with a category and then coming up with a word in that category for each letter. We also play a version that let’s us talk about our day with our ABC About Your Day game.
New Lyrics – Sometimes we make up silly new lyrics to well known nursery rhymes or songs. I like Mary Had a Little Lamb much better now that we have the “Larry Had a Little Ham” version.
Stickers for Horses – This was a popular game to play in the car when my kids were toddlers. We’d have a stash of stickers along and each time they saw horses they got to put a sticker on the door next to them (of course you could have them put the sticker in a notebook if it’ll cause too much mess to put stickers on the car). If you’re not in the Southwest where horses are plentiful choose some other common sight to sticker for.
Look for Wildlife – Maybe this isn’t exactly a game, but many car rides have been made better by one of us saying, “Hey, guys, have you spotted any elk? or “This area has lots of Big Horn sheep, let’s see if we can find one!” It’s not a long lasting game, but we certainly have been rewarded with kids who spot wildlife on the go.
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Spelling games like Ghost! Someone starts by saying a letter, and the next person adds a letter WITHOUT spelling a word. The next person adds a third letter and so on, until someone is forced to spell (or accidentally spells) a word. That person is out for the next round. Keep going until one person emerges victorious!
Another favourite is the license plate sentence game. In some states this works better than others, depending on the style/format of the license plates there. But in some cases plates have a series of three letters (such as Washington State and some plates in Michigan). Everyone takes turns coming up with a sentence or phrase based on those three letters. For example: GKP could be Great Kangaroo Parade or Gigantic Kale Products. ARV could be Anteaters Really Vomit or Around Red Valleys. There’s no winning or losing in this game–just lots and lots of laughing. 🙂
Singing Wheels on the bus but changing it to wheels on the car. When the wipers go swoosh swoosh swoosh, I make the wipers go. When the horn goes beep, beep, beep… I honk the horn. Etc.
Finding road signs that start with the letters of your name. First one finished wins. Example Emily
E-exit 101, M-merge left, I-interstate 1, L-Left on Main St, Y-yield to oncoming traffic 🙂
We love the alphabet game and I spy!! I am so grateful for this post and list because we have a road trip coming up and I really would like to use the DVD player less:) love your blog!!!!!
We love to play the “wacky game” where we find silly things:)
My kids are little so we mostly play iSpy. When I was a kid I loved 20 questions and travel games like travel Yahtzee.
these are great.
we play 2 truths and a lie and you have to guess which one is the lie…always revealing.
You listed some great games! In addition, we often play the rainbow car game (best in town). Work as a team to spot cars from each rainbow color.
Thanks for the chance at the Hyatt room night!
Wow, what fun memories we have of playing Slug Bug, I Spy and seeing how many different state license plates we could find! I saw that someone else mentioned Raffi! What great songs he sang! Our daughter just loved him! That was back in the 80s – really takes me back.
We always play I SPY and Hangman, but mostly past the time playing 20 questions …except my kids only ask one question over and over again. “are we almost there?” repeat 20 times. We would love to win! we love Hyatt House – last year in Houston our house flooded from the heavy storms and we lived at the Hyatt House Galleria for 7 weeks – they were amazing to our family. (my son learned to swim in their pool, and my daughter lost a tooth there).They went above and beyond to accommodate us and our pets during a very hard time for us. Would love to visit a Hyatt House without being under such stress.
We play many of the games named above “I Spy (with my little eye)”, 20 questions, “I’m thinking of…,” A-Z spotting, and…
…travel board games such as chess, checkers, memory games (with a selection of thematic cards), and dominoes.
Progressive stories are fun, too. One person starts, then others add on.
We also listen to the radio until we lose our signal, then we do lots of singing with CDs, especially Camp Tawonga songs, repeat, repeat. Of course, books on tape have taken us a long way.
Because I never gave my daughter screens in the car, she is the kind of traveler that can sit and enjoy the scenery, silently or chatting, for hours!
Thanks for your site. I’m a newcomer and am enjoying it!
We love to play “Bobby’s World”. It has to do with the double letters in Bobby. You come up with a word with double letters and one without that have some connection. “In Bobby’s world there are PILLOWS but no blankets.” There are FEET but no toes. We keep going until we get stumped 🙂
Thanks for the great list.
My 4 year old made up a game, “guess which letter I am thinking of”. Yes, just like it sounds. You think of a letter and then the other people try and guess which letter.
Another one he made up is “the humming game” where you guess what people are humming. Being 4, he doesn’t hum well enough for us to guess correctly, but he’ll often say we’re right with whatever song we guess.
When I was young we played slug bug, I spy, looked for out of state plates and tried to go through the alphabet by only calling out letters off billboards
I want this soooo bad. My husband and I haven’t had a vacation alone in so long. When we go on road trips with the kids we play the license plate game and see how many different state plates we can see. We also play name that tune! My husband puts on Sirius Radio and plays 80’s music. The kids try to guess who is singing! So fun!
Please pick me!!!!! Merry Christmas!
We play I Spy and 20 Questions!
I Spy was a favorite when I was a kid. Also, my mom bought me a new book–one of those with the pen that revealed the “invisible” ink.
We play battle of the bands alphabet game. Example: a- Aerosmith b- bell and Sebastian’ c- catpower d- dead milkman e- Eric Clapton etc
Always loved playing “I’m thinking of the color……” or listening to the Canadian singer, Raffi, and having the kids guess what instrument was playing at the time. They got very good at it, too.
Please put my name into the drawing for the Hyatt prize. Thanks. Susan
When I was a kid I loved playing the “Beaver Cleaver” bug game by looking for VW bugs and convertible bugs and adding up points for each one spotted. It was a great way to pass the time on long trips!
We love to play I Spy with My Little Eye!! And also lots of mental math story problems.
Our favorite game is “I’m thinking of an animal”. You can only ask yes/no questions like…. Does your animal live in water? Does it live on land? Does it like Hot places/Cold? Four legs? Ect…., many fun hours spent this way!!
We play alphabet game where we try to follow the alphabet in a category.. Abc foods: Apple, banana, carrot, Danish, and so one…
We have spent a lot of time on roadtrips and flights – our top games include:
1) True and False – my boys love this game! Sometimes we keep it silly and family related, like “dad loves cake” – “false”, othertimes factual like “a crocodile is a reptile” – “true”. The stranger the better.
2) Another success is audio stories to listen to – we bought Julia Donaldson as well as Roald Dall box sets which is great to pass time as well as develop listening skills.
3) Melissa and Doug also has a great range of travel toys calles “on the go”.
4) A packet od bandaids can keep my kids busy and there is lots of fine motor practise in managing a plaster.
Happy travels!
My son’s favorite is Would You Rather? Basically, making a choice between two really gross, dangerous or awful options. Perfect for elementary and middle grade kids!
Our favorite is the “I’m going on a picnic” game where you are bringing something from each letter of the alphabet (but you have to remember everything else brought too!!)
Or we like guess what {category} I’m thinking of… Like 20 questions
I spy or singing silly songs!!!
When I was a kid we played a lot of alphabet road signs. Similar to your alphabet game. We went through the alphabet having to find a sign (even business names) for whatever letter of the alphabet we were on. Other than that apparently I just talked a lot. My nickname was chatterbox on road trips. The last time we took my kids on a road trip they weren’t old enough for many games. They are now though! I can’t wait to try all these out with them!
the alphabet game!
We love to play I Spy! We also enjoy playing a game where someone hums a few lines of a song and everyone else guesses what song they are hearing just like Name That Tune. Changing words to a popular song to make it silly is also one of our favorites in the car.
Our favorite is I spy and taking turns picking songs from my ipod and singing along.
We usually play I Spy, or the Alphabet Game, and we do a lot of singing along to the radio!
My kids like to pick a car color and see who can spot the most of that color or an uncommon color and see who spots it first.
My daughter is still pretty young (3) so we mostly play “I Spy” and name the colors of the cars.
My kids are still pretty little, but our favorite road trip game is “guess this tune”. We play a few different versions. One version we hum or whistle a few notes, or let my older son try to do it. The other version is playing a song for a few minutes and then turning down the volume and letting the kids guess. It’s a great listening game and they are typically pretty good at it! 🙂
My 8 year old plays games like I Spy while my three-year-old modifies each of the game changing them into how many buses can you find jets can you see or how many times can you annoy your sister
We play the color game and try to point out a car in every color of the rainbow!
We play the “Guess What I’m Thinking” game. It’s a take on 20 questions, but one that my son has always found to be easier. Whoever is it thinks of something (an object, a person, anything really) and then starts with “I’m thinking of something . . .” After each guess, another clue is added along with all of the original clues. This continues until the guessers either get the answer or give up.
This would be so fun! We always play the alphabet game in the car.
We love to take the mess free markers/coloring books along as well as playing guessing games… Person gives 3 clues and the other has to guess the object/animal, etc.. My 3 and 5 year old love it!
We play a literacy version of i-Spy – “I spy something that begins with….” It’s great for any time we have to wait!
I always played the license plate game as a kid – see how many different ones you can find. Now my daughter plays
Our kids are pretty little and we don’t travel very much, so we just bring along books, coloring books and favorite stuffed animal friends to keep them entertained. Spotting airplanes and police cars/ambulances/fire trucks are their favorite though!
License plate game is our classic but I love the stickers for horses idea!
I love I spy can play it anywhere. Really fun when traped in the car.
We make up games like “count how many transporter trucks you can spot before we get there”. I spy has also been a favorite and ” Continue the story” where everyone adds a line and we make up a silly story. Listening to music and audio books have also been a great way to pass the time on our road trips. Some of our favorite audio books have been the Magic Tree House Series and James Herriot stories.
We play the license plate and the ABC games on our road trips. Leaving for a big one in the morning!
Great ideas! We like to play finish the story. We roll the die and that’s how many words we can add to the story. One of us writes it down.We keep going until we think the story is done! We also like The license plate game, were you search for as many different license plates as possible. Whoever spots the most wins! We also play a game where depending on what you can find driving, is how many points you get it. For example, if we’re driving through the mountains we would get, say, five points for a bird, 10 points for coyote, 25 points for a moose etc. We also love to sing songs with silly voices!
Our kids are still super young so it’s just sing alongs right now but this is a good list to keep in the back pocket!!
My favorite road trip game would have to be the alphabet game.
Right now during the holiday season , my little ones search for house decorations and lights until we are all oohing and aahing.
Great ideas! We sometimes play the “add on story” game. (Someone starts, “Once upon a time, there was a ____ that______”. And then the next person adds to it, and you continue around. My kids compete to see who can say the silliest thing!
We love dreaming up our next adventure. Sometimes it is our next local trip or a bucket list escape. Audio books are also a hit.
We love to play “I Spy”, Slug Bug, and doing art! I have a on the road spirograph that my son will get for Christmas!
We love to play the cow game – each kid counts how many animals on their side of the car. If you see a church, double the number. If you see a graveyard, you lose all of your animals!
Mine are still pretty young – 3 and 5 – and we don’t usually have to travel far. SO for now I just try to time it during naptime! If that doesn’t work we play the “humming game” -name that tune basically. Or I spy is always good. Love all these great ideas!
I always liked the license plate game. Or on very long road trips my Mom used to wrap up a bunch of little presents that we got to open once we reached a certain mile marker and that kept us occupied with a new activity! We used to drive from Utah to Virginia so a very long trip!
Tracking license plates, I spy, finding the alphabet, bingo, audio stories
Thanks for all threat ideas! On our last road trip, we played a car scavenger hunt game. For our 3 year old, he had a sheet full of different types of vehicles- school buses, motorcycles, semi trucks, etc. He used crayons to circle the ones he saw. Our 11 year old got a sheet with the symbols for all the different makes of vehicles, which was much more of a challenge, but so fun!
I spy and tic tac toe 3 (color cars or same type cars) in a row! Great new ideas for our next road trip thnx!
Great ideas! We love Mad Libs!
We like to listen to audiobooks… We have enjoyed the Narnia series as well as The Land of Stories. On a long trip, you really can get swept away in a good story and then have so much to discuss throughout the trip!
We usually play classic I Spy and 20 Questions, will have to try out math games for my second grader now that he is old enough to figure them out, and the alphabet game for my preschooler. Thanks for the ideas!
Our kids enjoy listening to books on CDs in the car on roadtrips, as well as coloring and doing stickers. One thing our 4 year old daughter enjoys is opening and using a box of princess bandaids as stickers on roadtrips. It’s the one time she is allowed to “play with” band aids and she loves it!!
I also take along a clipboard with a storage compartment, for coloring and quiet time. Stock the interior with paper, a coloring book, crayons, and colored pencils
When I was growing up, we had a set of mind teaser questions we would read periodically throughout the trip (often as the driver needed more interaction). My oldest is in preschool so the ABC game and I spy are more or less the extent of our road trip games, unless she makes up a game like “princesses.” She also likes to make up new songs and see if I can repeat all of it without messing up. … I guess that could turn into a fun game if we take turns making up a song.
When I was a child, we would keep track of the different license plates and try to “collect” as many states as possible. When my children were younger, they sometimes would try to see how many vehicles of a certain color (red, blue, green…) they could find and count.
Thanks for all of the ideas!
We play counting games and color games.
We play ‘guess that noise’ and all take turns making a sound that everyone had to guess.
I-spy is our family favorite!
Love playing ISpy on car rides. We play different versions of an alphabet game (A my name is Alice, my husbands name Al….). We also play create a story game where everyone has to come up with the next line of the story but they have to include everything said before their turn…ie…I am a dog. (the next person would say) I am a dog. I love hula hoops…and so on. It gets hysterical. I also love playing this game with my Girl Scout Troop.
Thank you.
We like to play I spy and 20 questions! My two year old always wants to be a puppy. We have also started playing hangman with our six year old! She likes to spell her own words so it is EXTRA tricky!
Story and coloring books are great for younger kiddos. and fun busy bags. Audio kid books are great too!
I like to pack a snack and small toy in a brown bag or wrapping paper for the (younger) kids to open ever hour or so to break up long trips!
A great game for older boys: Be the first to Correctly identify the on coming vehicles.
My daughter loves to play the ABC game–finding each letter of the alphabet on the road signs we pass. I remember travel bingo and find the most states on license plates when I was younger.
We love the soft travel trays for coloring with twistable colored pencils and new coloring books and blank notebooks. The kids also like getting kid packs at state welcome centers so they can learn about where we’re at on the trip.
We love “I Spy” and counting games!
Love Travel Bingo, but now I have more ideas!!
Love these creative ideas! “I spy” is always a favorite in our car.
We like to play travel bingo. i create a bingo game board. included on it visual pictures. people, places, things, and objects we are sure to see in-route to destination.
winner gets a bingo! += wins a small prize.
Crocodile dentist, felt boards, individual magnadoodles for versions of Pictionary, animal lookout! Happy Holidays All!
We love to play I spy and the alphabet game on road trips.
Just what we need! Please enter me! Merry Christmas!
I just recently introduced my four year old to 20 questions, and that’s her new favorite game to play on car rides. We limit it to animals since she knows a lot of animals. She still struggles with figuring out the questions to ask, but she giggles every time ANYONE guesses an animal correctly.
We love I spy and What if….
I love playing an abc license plate game and all around. Have to start with a can’t be anything in the car and has to be the first letter. I’m not sure we ever finished!
We play 20 questions which works for all of us ages 6 and up.
We love playing the classic license plate game. My seven year old loves it, five year old is a little young for it but still enjoys it.
We like to play the game heads up on our iphone. Where you have to give a description of what is shown on the screen. For the kids we usually select the categories that involve animals or food. We also like to play this word game where we count to 3 and everyone yells out the first word that comes to them. We do a series of 3 of those bursts to see who eventually becomes in sync and says the same word as another person. It’s pretty fun.
We love the abc game both in the car with a category like food or animals, etc. and finding the letters in order on signs outside the car!
We’ve never been on a road trip with our 3 1/2 year old. But when we are in the car we like to sing songs or just talk about our day.
We have pretty young kids, so right now we mostly sing and listen to books on tape 🙂 not exactly games, but it is fun!
We still have little ones (6 and 3), so one of our favorites is to hum a tune to a familiar so fans see who can guess the song. Of course, “I Spy” is also a good stand by option. ?
We love to play the color game. We look for things of a certain color and who ever finds the most wins!
We love to play I spy. We look for colors or words or go through the alphabet. I ask my 4 year old what signs she can read.
We love ISpy and the alphabet game and making up songs. This is because these are the only car games I knew. I’m excited to test out some of these.
We like to play carioke it’s like karaoke but in the car.
My daughter is 4 and we enjoy coloring, singing songs, and the alphabet game is a favorite.
Eve for rides around town, we quite often play the “flag game,” which just entails yelling “flag” when you see a flag, and keeping count, and we also play a kind of vehicle bingo, where you make a list of certain kinds of cars/vehicles (I.e., green car, dump truck, tractor, and a car tooling a boat) and the first one to find all wins.
We like choosing a certain type of car (like Toyota Siennas) and seeing who can be the first to call it out whenever we see one on the road.
We love to play the ABC game or Animal game
We love to play memory games and alphabet games!
Our favorite road trip game is ‘I spy’ or the first one to spot a certain make model and color of the car’s on a list we make before heading out on our trip.
We play a lot of math and spelling games with our first grader. If we’re traveling at night we look at the stars. We all look for Transformer Rescue Bot-type vehicles to entertain our toddler.
We like to play “I Spy” and looking for letters on road signs.
“I Spy” is still our favorite game for road trips, plus during the holiday season we like counting how many homes have holiday decorations. It’s good counting practice for the kids!
My kids are still very young but we always take a magnetic/erasable drawing board for them to play with.
The alphabet game is great because people of all ages can participate. My 7 year old especially enjoys it. We also like small travel sized games, such as Guess Who. And tic tax toe and dots are always good time fillers, too!
My kids are 5 and under so we do a lot of coloring and reading books. We also like watching for animals and big trucks.
We like to play an alphabet game in which each fill in the blank has to start with the same letter. My name is ___, my favorite food is ____, my favorite animal is ____, and I live in —–. We also enjoy singing and listening to Harry Potter audio books!
We play ALOT of I-Spy. I found sturdy travel bingo cards at a local toy shop, made by Toysmith, my kids like those a lot. They tuck away nicely in the car when they’re not being used. It’s not a game, but I try to find audiobooks from the library related to our road trips. Then I’ll pause it every once in awhile and ask fun questions, like do you think this character would enjoy the trip we’re going on? Can you talk in the voice you think the character sounds like? Would you want to be friends with these characters?
Love them all, but who am I kidding I just want a reason to go on a road trip!
We love to play I Spy!
We play the alphabet game
We like to play Ghost! Starting with the letter “a”, you take turns adding a letter to create a word. You have to have a minimum 5-letter word in mind. The object is to NOT be the person to complete the final letter of the word. So words can evolve as you play OR some people bluff. If someone calls your bluff, you lose. If this happens or you complete the word, you get a letter from “ghost”. Much like the basketball game of “horse”, once you complete “ghost” you are completely out of the game. For the next round, you start with a new person and the next letter of the alphabet, i.e. second round would start with the letter “b”.
We love to listen to books on c.d., look for license plates from different states, play I spy, and make up guessing games.
Hello everyone happy holidays so we love to sing new songs that we learned in school and also he reads out loud to me different books in the car.
We love I Spy, guess the animal, and finding a certain color car. If it is an extremely long ride, they enjoy coloring and watching movies.
we love “I spy” and “alphabet game” no license plates allowed.
We play a lot of I Spy, reading, coloring, and singing of course. My 4 year old loves to belt out tunes! We sometimes ake the child-sized keyboard in the car so she can play music too 🙂
We play: I Spy, Alphabetical What to bring on a picnic, name that tune, and let’s tell a story (where we take turns making up a part of a story),
We play “I went on a road trip, and I saw . . . “; find the alphabet in order on signs; everyone gets a color, and you look for cars that are your color; keep track of how many license plates we see for each state and province; tell stories where everyone has to add a line to the story; I Spy . . . and anything else we can think of!
Used to love long car rides because my dad and I would play games while my mom and little brother would sleep. My favorite was helping to navigate with the big Thomas Guide! I wonder if our older son is ready to do that… ‘I Spy’ is still the we play the most.
20 questions. You have 20 chances to guess the thing that someone is thinking of. This game has been played by generations of our family and never gets old.
Our favorite road trip game is looking for out of state license plates.
We also like to play “I Spy” which gets funnily complicated when someone picks something outside the car- you have to guess fast before we pass it!
My girls are still young so we do a lot of singing on road trips. 🙂
Since we finished the Harry Potter series, taking turns naming a Harry Potter character passes the time vey quickly.
The “I’m thinking of an animal” game and license plate game are big in our house/car.
We love to play I spy and the alphabet game. My daughter decides what we will be listing with the alphabet whether it’s animals or food! She’s always making up games to play too! Like guessing what animals she’s acting out or try to guess what she is thinking based on her clues. I love her creative thinking!!!
We like to play the animal guessing game. Each person picks 3 clues about an animal and the rest of us need to try and guess it. It’s fun to see the difference in choices between my 4 and 6 year old.
We did a variation of the alphabet game when I was a kid. We had to find the letters In order, but we could only find them on license plates. We would also sing nursery rhyme songs and “a Swiss boy went yodeling”. My kids like that one. My kids are still young so we play I spy a lot.
We play “I spy” in the car with our 2 year old son. we also like to play “count the tractor trailers” ?
We like to play I spy and sing songs.
We love to play either the license plate game or the alphabet game. My son is 10, so he gets pretty good at finding things. I am going to be using this a lot though now that we also have an almost 2 year old and are planning to go on some trips in 2016. Thank you!
We play “I Spy” and the alphabet game. But since my daughter is small we also do a lot of singing and I try to distract her a lot with the pretty natural things we see outside!
We love to play a game we call “what am I?” It’s like 20 questions, but we don’t put a limit on the # of questions. One person thinks up an animal, and the others take turn asking questions to figure out what animal it is.
Another fun one is “Group counting to 10.” The goal is to make it to 10, with only one person say each number. If 2 people say a number, you start again at one. All counting must be random! You can’t decide who says what, what order you go in, or have someone direct the counting. It’s harder than you think! And lots of fun!
We love the license plate game. These are great ideas!
My kids are still young, but when I was a kid, my favorite was collecting license plates and trying to see if we could find the same one again on our way home. My dad also would do a map “game” of sorts to help give us perspective on how long we had to go–we would use our bodies as our distance guide–for example, if were half way to our destination, we were at our belly buttons. If we just started, we were at our feet. And if we were almost there, we were at our chins, or eyes! I always loved that.
We love to play the license plate game on long road trips.
Our longtime favorite is I Spy. I love watching the way kids at different ages approach the game. Our 10 year-old delights in stumping her younger siblings with a sophisticated choice, while our 4 year-old gets a twinkle in his eye just for playing a game, never mind the rules or whether he’s winning.
Thanks to everyone for the great ideas!
The paper Battleship looks so fun! We have the iPad Battleship app, and we like to play that way on road trips, but the paper one would not drain battery life! 😉
My kids always play I Spy or be the first one to find all the letters of the alphabet.
We play fill in the Christmas lyrics game. I start the song and she finishes
Alphabet game is a favorite.
Oh this is such a timely post as we are preparing for a road trip!!! We love the alphabet game and “I spy” and i’ll definitely be trying some of the others as well with my kids. Thank you 🙂
My 8 and 6 year old enjoys playing “I Spy” and really enjoys having a special pack of printables with travel related activities and games.
We love car bingo.
Ispy all the time!! My kids like to play it even at the grocery store ??
My boys are 1.5 and 3.5, so we like to tell stories, sing songs, and color ! I like the idea of letting my 3 year old take pictures!
We have always played 20 Questions, which can get pretty comical when you’re playing with preschool aged kids who kind of make it up as they go. Does is fly? Yes. Is it blue? Yes. Does it have feathers? Yes. Then when you finally give up because there is no animal that has the combo of characteristics described…..”It’s a pig!”
While “I Spy” and the License Plate game are popular in our family, we also like to play our own version of “Slug Bug.” We look for VW Beetles or yellow cars (my son’s favorite color) and shout, “Bingo” if we see one. If we see a yellow VW Beetle, then it counts twice!
We love to play with Water Wow books and see if we can spot any of the items in the books while we drive, and we also like to sing along with our favorite music and songs from Sunday school and other kids songs. We also do Barbie and stuffed animal make believe scenes too. Just being silly. ?
We play the gross dinner game…each person adds an ingredient to a list to make a gross dinner! (Meatballs with pineapple with yogurt…)
We play the grocery store game (I went to the grocery store and bought A – apples then the next person says A-apples and they add in the B item). it is a lot of fun with the kids thinking up items at the store and also remembering all of the items in order!
We play I spy and we make up lots of riddles :).
We love to think of as many words as we can that start with one letter of the alphabet. They almost always weave themselves into a bit of a story!
We play a game we call Remember when. We take turns telling a story of something that happens in the past. The story teller leaves names out until the end then the rest of us (usually with tears from laughing so hard) shout out who the story was as about. My 10 year old recently added to our game by telling a story that non of us knew. After a few minutes of her giggles & the rest of us trying to figure she blurted out “remember when I MADE UP A STORY TO TRICK YOU”. So now every once in a while we get to hear creative made up stories. Road trips are the best and kids are wonderful!!!!!
We think road trips are great! We like to play the alphabet game!
We play I spy and the boys like to look for cars or rvs and animals since we are in the Midwest.. Lots of those!! 🙂 great game ideas!!!
We play games of “I spy” on road trips!
Finding shapes in the clouds! And, of course, the Alphabet game and 20 questions.
We play I-spy or make up stories…someone starts the story with a sentence, and we take turns adding to the story- each person telling just 1-2 sentences on what happens next. It’s fun to see where the story goes…
Most of our family trips involve camping, so we typically play is, “I’m going camping and I’ll bring a …” The chant works through the alphabet with each person repeating what’s already been said and then adding an item that begins with the next letter. It gets pretty silly. We also just dance and sing to oldies like Buddy Holly and Johnny Horton. Thanks for all your new ideas!
My littles ones are still little, but we do quite a bit of road trips and have started playing games in the car. We love to play I spy and the alphabet game. I LOVE the horses sticker one, we will for sure be doing that on our next adventure!
We really enjoy the license plate game and punch buggy and the alphabet game.
“Eye spy with my little eye…” Especially hilarious when my three year old plays it. We also play “DJ,” the kids take turns picking the song we play off of Spotify. Also, a game of “Would You Rather” is fun and is interesting to see what option the kids would pick.
We always look for animals and play I spy! We have a long road trip coming up in a few months so thanks for the ideas.
20 questions is our go-to road trip game!
We play I Spy and travel bingo. Thank you.
My kids love to tell One Word Stories while travelling. They can entertain themselves for hours by telling a bizarre story, one word at a time.
We love to play the licence plate game.
We play connect the dots. Start with a grid of dots and each player connects 2 dots. When you form a square, initial it and take another turn. Player with the most squares wins.
We love the ABC game. My mom and dad played it with us and now we play it with our kids. We also love seeing who can be the first person to shout out the name of a new state that we cross over into.
We played the alphabet game of finding the alphabet on order on the street signs, when I was a kid. Now my daughter is old enough to start playing.
My kids are 3 and 5 and very silly. So when their patience is growing thin with being in the car, we’ll pick a song they know and we’ll sing it, but I’ll randomly add in an incorrect word (like twinkle, twinkle little pants) and it cracks them up so thoroughly!
Great post! Love all the ideas! Our favorite game is another variation on the Alphabet game – we look out the window and look for letters to spell our names.
I love the stickers for horses game idea! I put together a car kit for my daughter last time and 1 of the activities I did was I gave her a small cardboard white board that I found in the dollar section at Target and then a whole bunch of different stickers (automobiles, dinosaurs, animals) and I held the stickers and would give them to her 1 by 1 and we talked about what each one was (a Giraffe, a Steamboat etc.) and a fun fact about that item.
We play a game called ” Ich packe meinen Koffer”. It is something I played as a child growing up in Germany. One person starts with “I am packing my suitcase and I am bringing a teddybear. The next person has to repeat the teddy bear and add something to it…winner is whoever is able to recall everything the longest…
Of course, the classic alphabet game, only you need to find the actual letters rather than just something that begins with that letter. We like to play the noun/verb game, too. We take turns calling out a noun or verb and they say which it is, or else I call out “noun” or “verb” and they name a specific one that they see or think of. Not exceptionally exciting, but the younger kids love it and it’s a great aid when they open their grammar books.
We play lots of I Spy and the license plate game! 🙂
We play finish the song lyrics. My daughter sings Christmas songs but has language delays w regular speech. So I start the tune and get her to fill in the rest. It’s learning and fun while we drive
Our family loves to play “I’m thinking of something” or “Eye Spy”
We love to sing along to the radio and both of my girls LOVE to read in the car. Even if we’re going to the grocery store they bring a book.
The ABC or find a color game.
I Spy
We have a ticket system where I tape up a slip of paper/ticket to be turned in for a small prize or activity or special snack. This helps us count down the hours until we arrive at our destination and to break up the time with little surprises. We also like to keep track of the number of different states we find on license plates.
It’s fairly easy to make laminated scavenger hunt cards for kids to color, or circle things they find along the way as we’re driving. Depending on potential, pine tree, ‘leafy’ tree, skyscraper/house, deer/dog, bicycle, semi/dump trucks, lake,.. You get the picture. Can totally be used over an over!
What great ideas! My children are all on the younger side (6 and under), so we usually keep it pretty simple and play good ol I Spy. One effective activity, though not a game, is that I will get a big stack of new library books and not let the kids look at them until our trip! 🙂
Our favorites are the license plate game, A my name is game….”Abby and my husbands name is Adam, we come from Alabama and we sell Ant traps!” as you go through the letters of the alphabet!
Growing up we played a game we called Stink Pink. One person thinks of two rhyming words, then depending on how many syllables the words have, you say you have a Stink Pink, Stinky Pinky, Stinkidy Pinkidy, then give a little clue for each word, and let people guess.
For instance: I have a Stinkidy Pinkidy, and the clues are southern country/get some gas. Any guesses?
I Spy is one of my favorites! I remember playing it when I was little with my Mom and Sister during road trips.
I love the photo scavenger hunt and horse sticker ideas.Those are two ill be trying with the kids on our next road trip!
Growing up, my fave ones to play were the license plate game and abc hunt.
Great giveaway! Love this blog…and hyatt house of course 😉
We play 20 questions, guess the movie. My kids LOVE it. Also I bought metal cookies sheets from the dollar store and we put magnets on puzzles. These trays come in handy a lot on big trips; food, games, don’t drop your crayons, etc. I have 5 kids and we take at least one, some years two, big trip without a dvd or tablet, no electronics! Super fun to read, sing, and book on cd. Most importantly is the night travel glow Sticks and a dollar store prize every 100 (ish) miles. So fun! It makes me want to go on a road trip right now!
Thanks for all the great ideas! My four year old loves ro play I Spy. His godmother taught him to play it saying, “I spy with my little eye…” And he thinks its funny to say that eveey time. When i was a kid I liked to “mow the lawn” with my finger through the window, just pretending to mow whatever is alongside the car. My son thinks this is fun too. For long trips by airplane, I try to make a trip to the dollar secrion at target and wrap up little surprises to be opened along the way when my son is getting bored or fussy. This gives him a new small toy or game that we can play with on each leg of the trip.
What great ideas. It’s been awhile since we’ve played I Spy. Both my girls are avid readers and can read in the car without getting sick. Great ideas to rest their eyes and connect.
Love these ideas! My three year old loves I Spy, as well as listening to the radio and scrolling thru listening for songs based on things we are seeing.
Wiki sticks and spotting Airstream trailers!
We love to play 10 questions. Someone thinks of something or someone and the other people in the car have 10 questions they can ask to try to guess what that person is thinking about. To help out the kids’ guesses I’ll often give a category, animals, book characters, foods. My 5 year old loves it!
These are such helpful ideas for traveling! Your newsletter and blog are always so helpful as well and hit home with me in so many ways. It helps to know we’re not alone in the struggles of parenting!
We play Looking for out of state license plates, I spy and many of the other games listed. Super list!
We usually bring a bunch of books that I read to them. My younger ones like to play the opposites game where I say hot and they say cold, for example. Also, you can do the same thing with rhyming words.
our new favorite game is “yellow car!”
* When they were pre-schoolers we played eye-spy with colors.
*As pre-readers eye- with letters & numbers.
Not necessarily games, but also help:
* One year I bought clipboard boxes at an office supply store for road-trip supplies. We still use them. Be sure to pack scissors for all ages. Everyone loves scissors!
*Pack flashlights, glow sticks, other light-up things for December dark driving!
We love to play I spy and car bingo. We also check out audio stories from the library or download from sites like Sparkle Stories. My kiddos are young so I give them things to do like color, wiki sticks or pipe cleaners, and tin foil.
We love playing twenty questions! It’s especially fun when my three year old answers questions with confidence (but not accuracy) to give us an extra little challenge ;). Thank you for sharing more wonderful ideas!
Great ideas to help kids pass the time.
The Spelling Game. The first player spells a word. The second player has to spell a word that begins with the last letter from player 1’s word. Then the third player has to spell a word that begins with the last letter of player 2’s word. The fun ensues when you keep giving a person the same (perferably, less common) letter.
We pick a type of vehicle, car, truck, semi, etc and the color and whoever sees it first gets to pick the next car to look for. Keeps my boys busy for awhile.
Hi, when we go on road trips we pretend that I am the knight with a chariot and they are the princess or queen. The other cars depending in what color (we pick at the beginning) are the bad ones trying to capture the princess or queen. Also the trees are dragons coming for us and we duck when we see them.
It helps the time pass and is super fun.
This is fantastic, thank you!
These are great ideas!! We have totally left a crayon on the floor that melted everywhere! ?
Something we havd done to keep little toddler hands busy is to bring pipe cleaners and a bag of fruit loops to make a “candy necklace”. They have fun stringing the fruit loops on the pipe cleaner, and have fun with a snack at the same time!
We like to make up games as we go. Like count different color cars, see who can a “—-” (fill in the blank) first. Let each kid pick a song to play next…it keeps it fresh 🙂
My son loves the ABC road game. We also play I spy, mad libs, and stickers everywhere…the car is pretty much a disaster by the time we reach our destination.
I love these ideas because so far the best we’ve come up with was singing songs and playing “I spy”. ?
On really looooong trips, our favorite is the license plate game. 🙂
we play I spy a lot. My daughter loves to point out buildings and ask questions. She also likes to find signs.
We always like going through the alphabet using road signs. Good way to pass time while keeping your mind busy.
We played the alphabet game, license plates, and I spy when I was a kid and we loved them. Did the same with my kids but we added some “road trip” cassettes. Now my grand kids have been introduced to the Road Trips DVDs. We love to sing along. My youngest granddaughters are 2 and 3 so not old enough to play the alphabet songs yet but they love I spy with my little eye! Thanks for the new ideas. I’m going to pick up some stickers for our next trip!
We have always loved playing the license plate game as well as the classic ABC game!!!
The “and then…”game is great for memory and imagination. Plus, it’s a lot of fun! The first person starts a story with a character, a setting and situation then hands it off to the next person by saying, “and then..” Lots of giggles as each person takes the group’s story in a new direction.
Great ideas, love the sticker for horses game and the navigator games!
We like to Spy States. We try to identify as many different State/Province plates on our journey.
Eye spy….. Lots and lots of eye spy! We also have the old “car bingo” game where you slide the translucent red or green thing over various pictures of things you see along the road. This is a great game and we often play between stops- reset every time we stop for a potty break.
ABC game and “I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 10” are big hits for road trips. Even my 3 year old loves the number game even though she doesn’t always play correctly we all end up doing a lot of laughing.
We draw together, passing the sketch pad back and forth with each person adding to the same drawing. It’s super fun to see where others take the drawing and challenging too to come up with creative twists.
We literally play audio stories from sites like Lamplighter. My boys love it! It keeps all of us engaged and feuls their love for books. Plus, I enjoy the stories too…its a win-win!
We would play the ABC game by finding the letters in order on license plates, billboards, street signs, etc. I think we even went backwards once or twice as we got older and knew the alphabet better.
We travel for about 2 months each summer for work and fun so I thought we’d heard of all the road games out there, but your post had a few new ones I can’t wait to try! Our kids love the road alphabet game (finding the alphabet in order on road signs) and we play a modified version of I Spy where we have to find things that start with each letter of the alphabet. Our preschooler LOVES to hear us tell stories so we typically will have him find three things (a cow, a semi truck and a gas station) and we work together to make up a short story involving those things. Thanks for a great post!
We do the ABC game, I Spy and license plate game. Thanks for sharing some new to us ideas.
These are some great ideas!! Thank you. We travel by car a lot due to my children’s sport of choice. We play a game where we see how many states we can find on licence plates of cars passing. The boys like to play a game called Rare Cars, where they try to one-up each other on finding the rarest colored cars.
We just made a reservation at a Hyatt House in CO. I love staying in Hyatt Houses, and not just because of their kitchens in the rooms (thank goodness), but for how clean they are…
We love to play “guess my number”. It is simply where someone chooses a number and tells everyone some boundary numbers and tells guessers if their guess is high or low. Also a math game we do is counting backwards. This can be as easy as counting by 5s from 100 or quite a challenge (try counting backwards by 7 or 13).
We take turns picking a song and then singing along as loud as we all can!
We play the game: when I go on vacation will bring————- and everybody has to repeat the items and add to it. Great for memory, creativity and fun!
We have made commercials on the iPad or camera. Silly commercials for things that are laying around in the car. To this day they are some of the funniest videos we have!