Road Trip Games

When our family travels, we go by car. And when we go, we go far. No sissy 3 hour road trips for us. If you're lucky enough to have your family close by, bully for you. We must drive! And drive. And drive.

Someday I will show you the laptop mounting device thingy my husband custom-built for our van so that we could watch DVDs. But, as they say here in Texas, that's a whole 'nother story.

I've always got my ear to the ground for new activities/games to play while cooped up together for 12 hours. When the kids were younger, I was much more proactive than I am now. For long trips, I used to pack a surprise bag for each child. Usually containing a spiral notebook, new markers or crayons, activity books, coloring books, puzzles, sometimes a new plushie travel companion. I was thrifty and found many of the items at second-hand shops or the dollar spot at Target. The point was not to get the kids some fancy new toy, just something novel to add some excitement and help pass the time. If you don't have one lap desk per child, get some.

One of the games my kids still like to play is the Alphabet game. I marvel that it never gets old to them. Because for me, when one of them says, "Let's play the Alphabet game!" I inwardly cringe and scream, "No! No! No!" Outwardly, I cheerily say, "Sure!" (Or if the screaming in my head is particularly loud, "Maybe later, sweetie.") Here's how it works. One person starts with the letter 'A' and might say, "My name is Alphonso and I am from Alaska and I like to eat anchovies." And so on. To alleviate some of the boredom that may set in, you can change the parameters - for example, instead of a food, list an animal who is your pet. There are lots of ways to change up this game. The trick is to keep everyone else from shouting out suggestions to the person whose turn it is. (Please explain why, when it was your turn on 'P' you were drawing a complete blank, but now that your sister is on 'Q', you are full of ideas that you just can't keep quiet - Quentin! Queenie! Qatar! Quiche! Quesadillas!)

Another game which is not really a game, per se, is the license plate game. Simple. See how many of the 50 states you can find while on your trip. Our record (achieved on our latest road trip) is 44. Which is pretty darn good when you are driving from Texas to Florida on I-10. This activity gives the kids something to look for while on the highway. If you know the song "Fifty Nifty United States" now is a good time to teach it to your kids and they will learn to recite the states in alphabetical order (an indispensable skill!) I find it strange that I have yet to get any takers on this suggestion.

We recently started playing a new game on our road trips. Perhaps you and your family have played it in some form or fashion. For lack of an actual name that I know of, let's just call it the Make-up-a-Story game.

It is a fairly simple and cooperative venture. Here's how it works. One person starts the story; for example, "Once upon a time there was a cat named Whiskey who liked to sail." Then you go around and around with each person contributing a new portion to the story. You continue in this way until either the story reaches conclusion or, as frequently occurs in our vehicle, somebody gets upset because they are not happy about how their brother changed the story right before her turn and she had such a great idea and now she doesn't want to play anymore. It's oodles of fun.

Anyway. We have discovered that it is best to limit each storyteller to one or two sentences max. This (theoretically) keeps one person from monopolizing the story and sending it randomly careening down a new and crazy path. Which is, really, part of the fun of this game. My husband has a knack for being able to completely twist a storyline in the briefest of sentences, sometimes making the entire story up to that point a dream sequence of a completely new character. And my son is learning to master the fine art of the run-on sentence and liberal use of conjunctions.

Maybe "oodles of fun" is overselling it a bit. But it is good for passing the time, fosters creativity and expands language skills. As additional side benefits, it provides a venue for the parents to learn how to exercise patience toward their offspring in a confined space and creates real-life conflict resolution experiences for the children.

Or you could just pop in a DVD.

Happy trails!