Great 'Free Car Journey Games' Hunt

mumof5

We play the Eddie Stobart game where we look out for their lorries and see who can spot them first great way to pass a boring motorway journey.
My younger children who are 13,9 and 4 also play a game called sweet and sour they wave at people going pass in cars and if they wave back they are sweet and if they don't they are sour and will mark down how many they get of each.
The one rule that they have is that they don't wave at people who are on the car on their own just ones with passengers.

Rolandtheroadie

This year we travelled around 8 ours each way for our summer break so knew we'd need to ensure everyone was kept happy.
Our kids are 13, 5 and 18 month old twins. We set up a wee bag for the 5 year old with some cars and paper/pencils etc and some toys for the twins.
We then ensure we've a variety of dvd's for them all, that the Nintendo ds's are fully charged and the laptop and internet dongle are all present and correct. Dont forget the power inverter to keep everything charged.
We already had all this, so technically it's free.

gardening_madness

i was told recently about a game it involves taking pictures of everything intresting you see much like a journal this could be on a long journey a day trip to park or zoo or a longer hoilda. unfortunatly you need a camara but most people have one on there phone. then at the end of journey trip hoilday you compare pictures not tried it yet but i am going to this weekend sounds good so thought id tell you all

suejb2

Why not play car snooker. Red car=1 point yellow car =2 points green car=3 points brown car= 4 points blue car=5 points pink car = 6 points and a black car = 7 points. Either total the points up for the next 20 (you choose a number) cars or set a time limit to see how many points you get in 5 minutes ( you choose ).



Are we nearly there yet?

borderlakland

we play the alphabet game, 1 person picks the subject (food,sport,girls or boys names etc) then take it in turns to say something in that subject eg, apple, bananna, cauliflower etc, subjects are endless and easy to adjust to ages and can be quite educational by maybe using countries etc... just make sure you change who starts or the same person will always end up with the harder letters which causes much arguing:(

another 1 is starting the next word in a particular subject with the letter that ended the previous one eg apple, eggplant,tomato, orange etc

jax1305

cars count as one run, the rest you can vary by agreement beforehand eg caravan being towed=2 runs, lorry=4, car transporter obviously a 6, but keep it simple to start with.
red car counts as a wicket - you get 3 wickets & your innings are over.
we usually start an innings with the next red car. great for livening up the journey with shouts of 'HOW IS HE?' when a wicket is lost! great on motorways!
simple rules like car has to be in motion and has to travel past you in opposite direction or have engine running waiting at lights on opposite side of road - avoids the whole car park or side roads dilemmas / arguments. 11 year olds can get very pedantic.

And there's always the classic 'yellow car no return' - spot a yellow vehicle and hit fellow passengers before they hit you (and obviously 'no return' or they can hit you!). Yellow mini for some reason is 10 hits - but as long as you say 'yellow mini no return' before they do you can do the 10 hits at your leisure. Difficult for the driver to partake! won't go into the takeback rules - just too technical!!

codysmum_2

this one is good for traffic jams but is a bit revolting: we simply look round for people picking their nose and shout NOSE PICKER really loudly - a long jam on the M25 and you can get into double figures

spaghetti10

:AWe have just played this game and it worked really well!
One person says a key word and the other people in the car have to
come up with a word each that is connected to the key word.:De.g. key word lampost; dog, light, street (dog is connected because dogs pee on lamposts). When everyone has said a word the game starts again with the next person thinking of the key word and so on.:cool:

JimmyTheWig

babyshoes wrote: »

Making up words or phrases using the letters in numberplates around you. When you are stuck on the back of a motorbike for hours in the freezing rain, it is about the only distraction available, apart from making up silly songs and singing them out loud....

Much more fun to play number plate games with the numbers (imo).

For a traditional number plate with 3 digits, try to make an equation with the three digits using any symbols you need. E.g. if the numbers were 145 then you could have 1 + 4 = 5.

Or another game I made up is to use the digits individually to make the whole number. E.g. 1 + 4! + 5! = 145.
[N.b. ! means "factorial". E.g. 4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24.]
It's pretty unusual to be able to get the exact whole number, but try to get as close as you can.

Not so many 3 digit number plates around these days. So I turn the first two letters into their numeric equivalent (i.e. A=1, B=2, Y=25, etc) and play the original game with these two numbers and the next two digits. E.g. "AY51" gives the numbers 1, 25, 5, 1 and you could have 1 + root(25) - 5 = 1.


All good fun.

Katie

Our favourite one at the moment is guess the number. One person thinks of a number between 1 and 1000 and we take it in turns to guess and that person says 'higher' or 'lower', It's surprising how long the kids will play it for!

To add a bit of competition to it, see who can make the others take the most guesses to get their number. i.e. Don't go for obvious ones like 500 or 250!

We also do the name game like Borderlakland - usually with either boys or girls names. We have added the rule that if the word ends with the same letter as it starts, then play reverses direction.

As a side note (not for kids this one!) - at a party we played a variation on this called "Drink While You Think"! The subject was famous people and each first name had to start with the letter of the previous surname. E.g. David Beckham leads to Boris Johnson, onto John Lennon. But while you are thinking you have to drink your (alcoholic!) drink! My other half was terrible at it and ended up drinking a whole bottle of wine whilst we played - or maybe he was just pretending to be really bad so he had an excuse to drink more!