6 Simple Activities for Family (Road) Trips

We all know the game of finding the alphabet letters in order on road signs.  When I am on the road with my kids who are big enough to see license plates on cars, we play the same game for the plates.  But I keep trying to find twists to the game.  Who can be the first to find all the letters to spell out our last name in order?  Or ask them to each choose a 10 letter word of their own and see who finds the letters to their own word first.  Let the kids each make up an alphabet rule.

Tenzie

This is a game we love anywhere, and it can get a bit dicey in the car (you’ll get the pun further down), but this is very doable in a vehicle.  For this, you really need to get a hard surface with a lip around the edge for each person – a lap size tray of some kind – because this game involves rolling dice.  It’s a quick game, but has many, many variations.  The gist of the game is that each person has 10 dice.  On the ‘Ready, Set, Go’ everyone starts rolling their dice and each tries to be first to get the same number for all 10 dice.  It doesn’t matter what number it is, just all 10 the same. 

The variations come with a set of game cards that give different directions.  One might be that everyone has to get all 4’s for their dice.  Another might be that they all need to get five 5’s and five 6’s.  You get the idea.  If you don’t have a set of game cards, everyone can take turns making up a new rule, or whoever won the round before gets to give the new rule.

The ‘dicey’ part of this activity for a road trip is that if any of the dice jump over the edge of anyone’s tray, the next part of the game is to find lost dice at the next rest stop.  LOL

Story lines

This is not an original activity, but we love this one.  Someone starts a story and we go around the group to add on to the story. Our goal is always to have it make some kind of sense and for the story to be done after everyone (there ARE 8 of us) has had three turns. 

When we go on a road trip, we add a twist…. We record the story on someone’s phone and get it typed up (we use Dragon Naturally Speaking, but any voice-to-text will work) to make a book for everyone’s memory stash.  Because we know it will be saved as a momento from our trip, we try to include elements of our travel into the story, even if it is fantasmagical.  It’s especially fun if we have little ones with us, because they have the BEST IMAGINATIONS ever!  There is a lot of laughter. 

Paper dolls

I grew up with paper dolls.  My sisters and I would spend hours tracing the outlines of our paper dolls and adding tabs to the outlines, then designing new dresses, pants, coats, shoes, etc with our crayons. 

There are paper dolls out there in the world that you can buy and play with, but I usually find a couple of paper dolls online and print them on cardstock.  I usually cut the paper dolls out ahead of time, but that, itself can be a car activity. Then we bring along more cardstock, markers, scissors and tape (I’ve cut off my share of tabs that hold the clothing to the paper dolls and need to tape them back on). From the outlines, we design our own clothes for the dolls.  Even some of my older kids love this.  And they are wonderful at helping the younger one’s trace and color and cut (when I can tear them away from their own clothing design).

This is a site that lets you download and print paper dolls for free. https://www.printablepaperdolls.net/

It’s Time to Leave!

These activities are six of my current extras.  Everyone gets in the van for a road trip with their usual, well-loved activities… coloring books, activity books (sudoku, crossword), screen devices (phones or tablets), dolls, books, Matchbox cars, etc.  But I save the extras for when I hear the first “Are we there yet?”  My extra activities change all the time, but these are favorites with the kids.  And since foster care has brought newbies to the trips once in a while, it’s fun to recycle great ideas. Let’s hit the road!

I’d love to hear more ideas from all of you!!!!

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