Ideas for games and activities to keep kids busy on those long holiday road trips.
Will you be traveling during the holidays? What will you find to keep yourself busy in the car on a trip to Grandpa’s house for Thanksgiving or Christmas? Holiday travel differs from vacation traveling because people tend to be going straight from point A to point B with as few stops as possible. Even if you have electronics and radio in the vehicle these get old and boring after a while. How about things to play and ways to entertain your self along the way? Here are some good ideas.
The Busy Box
Try preparing a “busy box.” These are good for any age from preschool to teens. According to age and interests make up a plastic storage top (preferably with a hinged lid). Into the busy box, put coloring books and colored pencils, which won’t melt like crayons.
- Add activity books with puzzles, crosswords, and mazes for quiet spots during daytime driving. Some activity books have games specifically for the road.
- Take a small flashlight to play with.
- Mini-games with magnetic pieces are fun for playing the car.
- Take index card to take notes. These can be stapled together into a booklet to help you remember what you saw and where you went.
- A mini stapler, tape, paper clips and a manual pencil sharpener might come in handy.
- Take along some paper to draw and doodle.
- Add small toys and stuffed animals and such to occupy the little ones. Label your box and add your address.
- Take along a magazine. Highlights is a good one, but there are many more that can quietly entertain and be shared.
Collect Memorabilia
Collect stuff from the trip that costs little or nothing.
- Postcards of places you pass through are great to add to scrapbooks or show to friends when you get back home.
- Visitor centers and some restaurants and hotels provide free materials about the area for tourists.
- Take photos of road signs or roadside attractions.
- Canceled tickets from places you visit can be saved for the scrapbooking or for keepsake boxes.
- Save paper menus from restaurants.
- Flags or sate symbols from the states you pass through. Collect some printed materials with the names or outline maps of each major city or state you visit.
- Local newspapers from towns you stop in can be purchased at gas stations. Looking through these can give you an idea of the lifestyle of each community.
- Pens and pencils with state names or local businesses are fun to collect.
- Keychains are also fun to collect.
Group Games for the Road
- Try playing Twenty Questions. Start with someone choosing the name of some person, place or thing. The players then can ask questions. Someone counts each question. The questions must be answered with only a “yes” or “no.” For example: Is it a plant? Is it an animal? Is it large? Is it living? Does it eat bananas?
- Categories is similar to Twenty Questions. A questioner is selected to lead the game. Each competitor take his turn choosing a category. He should choose a subject he knows about. Then he decides how difficult a question he will want to attempt to answer, giving a number value from 1 to 10. The leader fashions a question on the subject and if the player can answer the question he makes that many points. Example: player chooses birds for 2 points. This should be a simple question like. “What bird flies in a “V” during migration?” If the player wants 10 point question, the leader makes it the hardest he can come up with. The first player to earn twenty-one points wins.
License Plate Fun
Each player begins a list of license plates he sees at the beginning of the trip. Older kids like this one. Watch for the states and list any state you see. Semis may carry several state licenses. It is allowable to count all of them. On a long trip choose a winner per day. Players compete for who sees the most different states. Check out parking lots at restaurants and hotels. Another game is writing down the license plates that spell out some phrase. Try to decipher the messages.
Have fun on your trip. Keep quiet and entertained. Remember getting there can be half the fun!
