Home And Family

You’re off on a day trip out. You’ve packed the car with the essentials for your day – picnic, bucket and spade, travel sickness pills, water, road maps. The children are all strapped safely in the back, and off you go. But just how long will it be before the children get bored and ask that inevitable question – “Are we there yet?”

Keeping children entertained on long car journeys is not easy. A bit of forward thinking will help, but it is possible to play some games in the car that will help the miles pass by.

20 Questions

A classic game, ideal for a car journey as it will last a while and get the children thinking for good questions. The first player has to think of an object, be it a cat, an airplane, an orange, or a telephone. The爋ther players are then allowed to ask twenty questions to guess what that item is. The answers can only be a simple yes or no. The first player wins if no-one guesses what the item is within those 20 questions.

This game promotes good thinking – it is no point guessing the item until you have asked good questions to narrow down the possibilities. Another variation would be to use celebrities or famous people, in which case the first question should be “Am I male” (or female).

Straight Face
The idea of this game is to have some fun! How long can you keep a straight face for when you can only answer everyone’s questions with a silly phrase like ‘Aunt Marge’s bloomers!’? Choose a player to go first, and give them a silly phrase to state. Then take turns to ask questions, and they are only allowed to answer using the silly phrase. Whoever asks the question that makes the person laugh then takes their turn. Obviously this could get very silly, but then that’s the idea!

Car Snooker
A great game to keep playing for a long time, car snooker is based on the real game. Players must look out for cars and “pot” them in turn. First of all spot a red car, followed by a color, then a red, followed by a color, and so on until all the reds have been potted.

In real snooker there is 15 reds, but you may feel this is too large a number and may wish to lower this number. Once the reds are gone then work your way through the colors in order, which is yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and finally black.

This game can be played by any number, but would be ideal for a lone child traveling with parents.

These are just a few examples of games that can be utilized in order to keep your car journeys less boring. For young children any journey more than 5 miles seems to take a long time, and anything to keep their mind occupied and off the journey must be a help.