When we were kids, we would look out the windows and learn from the world around us.
Do you remember playing car bingo as a kid? Well, those bingo games are still available (yes, even the vintage versions) and still so much fun. There are loads of activities that could help keep kids busy (and hopefully, not fighting) during those long car rides on family trips. If you’ll be taking your family on the road in the next couple weeks before school starts, you can leave the screens at home and avoid the fights or crankiness that comes when the video ends.
The ideas below are specifically for getting the family engaged and looking at the world around them, and were designed specifically for car rides.
For more ideas, there are plenty of “travel-sized” games out there, including compact single-player games. There’s also and lots of other things kids can do/play on their own during car rides, including some of these activity books (paint by sticker books are great), and also activities that work well while traveling (see this post for more activity ideas). Finally, what better way to end off the summer than with some lanyard?
What other activities do you like to do with your family during long car rides?
These look great! We just came back from our road trip but we’ll keep them in mind for future trips.
We print out a map of the united states & have the kids color in the corresponding states as we spot the license plates. We never found all 50 states but we’ve gotten close.
Another fun free game – everyone in the car chooses places you’d see on an exit sign (ex Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, or different hotels) and counts each time you see them, whoever has the most at the end wins. We’ve done the same thing with types of cars (sienna vs odyssey) or types of trucks (Amazon, Walmart, Wegmans etc) keeps everyone occupied and in our family it helps the kids who are more prone to carsickness when they’re looking out the window instead of down at an activity.