Road Trip Games/Activities

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We just took a 9 hour road trip to the beach and here’s what I did: I wrote down names of games/activities on slips of paper and about every 15-20 minutes or so the kids chose an activity from the basket of papers… by Angela Simmons
Here are some of what we did:

Aluminum Foil Creations: This was a favorite! I gave the kids each a large square of foil and had a contest to see who could come up with the most creative creation! They all wanted more foil when the contest was over to make more stuff.

ABC Bingo: Kids drew a bingo chart of 25 squares, one square for each letter of the alphabet (we left X off). Then, when they saw something that started with a letter of the alphabet, they marked that letter out until they had a bingo and then a cover all…

Beautiful Music: We took turns reciting (not singing) lines from songs, but making each word start with the letter B. Everyone else had to guess what song we were talking about. For example, You ain’t nothin’ but a hounddog, cryin’ all the time became Boo bain’t buthin’ but ba bounddog, buyin’ ball bu bime…etc.

Go Fish: We played this card game in groups of two, according to who was sitting where in the van.

Compound Words Game: We made a list of as many compound words as we could think of. It’s harder than you think!

Words within a word: We played many rounds of this game! We chose words or phrases that had to do with our destination (we used beach umbrella; sharks and dolphins; etc.) and then tried to find as many words within the phrases as we could. We then went over our lists out loud. The winner was the one who found the most words that no one else found.

Twenty Questions: One player thinks of a famous person, place or thing. Everyone else gets to ask the player 20 questions (1 at a time), which must be answered yes or no. Whoever figures out the person, place, or thing, gets a turn to go next.

Tic Tac Toe

Hangman

War (another card game favorite)

Balloonz: This was so much fun! We just batted a balloon around in the back of the van. The area is so compact and we were so tired that it just seemed like such silly fun when someone got hit in the nose with a balloon!

A is for Armadillo: Starting with A, each person tries to be the first to spot and name three items beginnning with that letter. For example, the first to see and announce armadillo, auto and apple gets to choose the next letter.

Alphabet Food Memory Game: First person names a food that starts with A, the next person names the A food and then adds a B food. Game continues until last person names 26 foods A-Z!

Vacation Challenge: This one is for the trip home! The last night of vacation, I made up a quiz about vacation and gave points for each correct answer (the harder the question, the more points earned). Here are some examples of my questions: For 3 points, where did we eat lunch on Tuesday? For 5 points, how many holes were in our room keys (collectively)? For 4 points, how many trash cans were in our hotel room?

Make Kazoos: We decorated up tubes with markers and stickers, attached squares of wax paper to one end with a rubber band, poked a few holew in the paper with a pencil, and sang with our kazoos!

We played some license plate games, but they didn’t go over very well since most traffic on major interstates travels about the same speed and other lanes are often separated by medians. We didn’t see new license plates soon enough for the kids not to get bored.

I made up a word search and printed it off, using beach words.

We did a scavenger hunt and looked for the following things. We worked on this one together:

flashing red light
bus
dog
food store
railroad tracks
billboard with a child on it
police
person talking on a cell phone
school
bike
statue
church
playground
pickup truck
WalMart
dog in a car
cows
tractor
gas statin
horses
barn
vending machine
motorcycle
bridge
red car
someone wearing a hat
rest area