6 road trip games to play with your family

People who say ‘it’s not the destination, it’s the journey,’ obviously don’t have kids. If you’re anticipating a four-hour road trip with the kids in the car, the mere thought of the journey can fill you with dread.

Well, not anymore… Alan Valkenburg has six games that can make any car, bus or train journey fly by.

Winter is coming and with it, the holidays. Because last winter wasn’t exactly road trip time, chances are you’ll want to make up for it and go somewhere, anywhere. Here are six games you can play with your family on the way. Some you’ll know, some you might not. Just remember: kids enjoy playing the games more when the grown-ups play along too.

My Minister’s Cat

This one is great for building vocabulary. Players take it in turns to think of one adjective starting with ‘A’, saying ‘My minister’s cat is an angry cat’, the next player: ‘My minister’s cat is an ambidextrous cat,’ and so on. Once everyone has had their turn with ‘A’, you move on to ‘B’. My suggestion would be to start with the youngest child first, ending with the adults so the little ones can say the obvious/easy words when you get to the tricky letters. You can explain words the kids don’t understand if you like.

I spy

If you live under a rock, we’ll forgive you if you don’t know this game. But only then. However, for younger kids who can’t spell yet, instead of playing ‘something that starts with (the letter) ‘C’,  you can also play ‘I spy something red’. Or ‘I spy something that can be turned into food’ or ‘something that makes us warm’.

I packed my bag and in it I put…

A memory game. What I love about this game is how even the little ones can shine at this game, often doing it better than the adults, who are concentrating on the road. The person who starts, says ‘I packed my bag and in it, I put… (and the makes something up)… a toaster’. The next player must say the first person’s item and add an item of their own, saying ‘I packed my bag and in it, I put a toaster and a pair of bunny slippers’. You continue going until someone messes up, although you can continue if you help each other out. Don’t make your items too long ‘A Nike jacket with a swoosh on the front and a French flag on the back’, but try and throw in something silly every now and again, to keep the little ones entertained ‘two live geese’, ‘the remote control’, ‘my lucky left shoe’.

20 questions

Another well-known one. I’m thinking of something, someone or somewhere and you have 20 questions to figure out what it is. This teaches young ones who might typically shout out the first question that pops into their mind, to wait and think it out, by asking vague questions to narrow it down before zeroing in later in the game.

The number plate game

Maths nerds, we have something for you, too. Using the numbers of the number plate in front of you, make zero. You can add, subtract, multiply and divide but can only use each plate number once and you must use all the numbers. This game is better on long journeys because you don’t want cars turning off when you were oh so close to cracking it. (Sidenote: If dad is the type of driver who feels compelled to overtake everything in sight, maybe this isn’t for you. Chances are he’s not that bright anyway.)
So: CA 453 482. Go!
(4-3=1, 8-5=3, 4-2=2; Now you have 1, 3 and 2 left. 2+1=3; 3-3=0)

The celebrity name game

Pretty simple really: The first person says the name of any famous person, dead or alive, fictional or real, and the second person must say a name starting with the first letter of that celebrity’s surname. So if person A says John McEnroe, Person
B’s must say a celebrity whose first name starts with ‘M’ (because McEnroe starts with an ‘M’)… Michael Palin. The next person then needs a celebrity whose first name starts with ‘P’ and so on. However, there is a twist: If anyone says a ‘double-
barrelled name, where the first name and surname both have the same letter (Sam Smith, Boris Becker, Mike Myers), play changes direction.

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PICTURE: Unsplash

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