Children look forward to family vacations every year, but long car rides can leave them bored and cranky if they don’t have anything to keep them busy. This year, make your drive a family adventure and a trip to remember. Take a look at our list of fun road trip games and crafts to beat the boredom.
License Plate Game: Try to spot a license state from all 50 states. Write down each state as you see it. You can play this game solo or in teams.
Map your Trip: Let your children map their road trip on their own. Take a map of the area and fold the map so the route you will be driving is showing. Put the map in a sheet protector and let each child take a dry erase marker. The children can watch for road signs or listen for your cues and can draw the route as you drive through the times.
Listen to Audio Books: Listen to books as a family or give your children headphones so they can listen on their own. The Magic Tree House series is one of our favorites and will keep your kids engaged for long car rides.
Make Jewelry: Bring pipe cleaners and accessories for jewelry. They can bend the pipe cleaners any way they want and put beads and other accessories on it.
Play ABC Games: Create different sentences starting with the letter A and work your way through the alphabet. The wackier the better!
Puppet Show: Bring paper bags and let the kids create as many puppets as they want. After they are done, they can put on their very own puppet show.
Quiz Your Math Skills: Quiz the kids in the car with some math problems. Depending on the child’s age, the problem could range from addition to multiplication and division.
Road Trip Bingo: Give each child a flat surface to put on their lap with a bingo card. Bring along a zip lock bag full of pennies or tokens. When a player sees an object on his card, he can cover it with a penny. The first person to get bingo can win a special prize!
Color Game: One player picks a color and the players must spot 10, 20 or 100 items in that color (number can vary depending on the age of the children playing). The first player to find 100 items wins!
Make Animals: Bring a roll of aluminum foil and the kids can make animals, people, shapes, etc.
Sticker Books: Bring sticker books and a pack of new stickers! You can also bring notebooks or even plain paper to put the stickers on.
Old Fashion Coloring: Bring coloring books or plain paper and crayons.
More fun games, crafts and activities to play in the car on the next page.
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The Alphabet Scavenger Hunt: This fun game can be played alone or as a team. Look for road signs, billboards, shop names – anything outside of the car that you can read. Look for every letter in the alphabet in alphabetical order. The first player or team to get to the letter z wins!
Travel Timeline: Let your kids draw pictures that represent each state they are passing through. Put it together to make a book of all the places they traveled through.
Felt Board: Before your trip, create a felt board along with pieces to go onto the felt board. During the road trip, your child can create many different scenes with it!
Create Stories: As you are driving, you will see different people and animals. Create stories as a family about each person or animal you see. Create their personality, what they do for a living, etc.
20 Questions: A player chooses an object and the rest of the players in the car get to ask yes or no questions. If you reach the 20th question, everyone has one last guess. If no one guesses it correctly, the object is revealed!
No Glue Scrapbook: On the way home from your trip, let the kids make a scrapbook of their vacation. All you need is a binder, paper clips, compartmentalized binder pages and souvenirs!
Name that Song: Hum, whistle or even sing a mystery song. The winner who guesses correctly gets to be the singer for the next round. You can also use the radio station instead of humming!
I Spy: This is a classic game to make time pass by! Someone chooses an object and gives clues as to what the object could be.
Grocery Game: This is a fun memory game that is sure to play in the car. The first player names an object starting with the letter A that is found at the grocery store. The next player repeats the object for letter A and says an object starting with the letter B. If you forget a grocery item, you are out! You can play this game with any category – sports, animals, etc.
The Banana Game: Keep your eyes open for passing yellow vehicles! Set a time frame for this and the person who finds the most cars during that time wins!