While planning for an upcoming road trip, I began to think of all of the car games that I knew for long road trips. However, I realized that I had one major deficit when it came to figuring out how to keep everyone happy for the duration of the car trip. Our two-year-old daughter would be at a loss for things to do during the road trip, which would lead to mass unhappiness for everyone else in the car. We don’t have and don’t plan to buy a DVD player or any other electronic entertainment, so we really wanted fun and active things for her to do that would keep her content.
Here are my thoughts on car games to play with toddlers for a road trip, as well as other ways to keep a young child entertained for long car rides.
I Spy: This game has unending appeal to our toddler. It’s a great way to reinforce colors, or shapes. When playing with a mixed group (ours included adults, teenagers and the toddler), you can change up the difficulty level to fit. Of course, this will mean understanding that the really easy questions are for the toddler to answer, not an overzealous teenager or adult! The premise is simple, and strongly backed up by our toddler’s love of the I Spy book series.
Rhyming words: We find this a great way to pass the time and reinforce early reading skills. This can get as rowdy as necessary to keep attention. The premise is simple. One person comes up with a word that can be rhymed easily. The next person comes up with a word that rhymes and so on and so forth. It’s not a particularly exciting game for adults, but it’s fun for small children.
Made up tales: Very young children aren’t yet able to do the older kids version of this (Continue a tale, in which each person comes up with a line of the story in turn), but they can participate in some rudimentary story telling. First, an adult can model by telling a short tale. For young children, it’s best to use short sentences, simple but engaging language and use your child as the main character. You can use books with lots of pictures and allow your child to “tell” the story from those pictures, or entice him to make up stories about what is going to happen when you arrive at your destination. For those who are not yet ready, you can create a rudimentary tale by giving simple choices within your own story and building the story in that way.
A to Z: Almost every road trip guide recommends playing the A to Z game. The premise is simple: moving through the alphabet, people take turns naming or finding objects that start with letters of the alphabet. For very young children and pre-readers, though, this game can be extremely hard and frustrating. For them, this game can function more like I Spy.
Clapping games: On just about every playground I’ve ever seen, children can be seen doing pat-a-cake style games to a variety of tunes and songs. Some popular ones that my daughter enjoys are Mary Mack and Down by the Banks. We simplify the clapping games to match her, and they can even be changed to a patting game to allow for situations in which nobody can reach to clap with her. These can get rowdy, but better a road trip full of rowdy fun than rowdy displeasure!
Hold it up: Our daughter will happily engage in a road trip if she’s on the look out for something. We have her keep an eye out for bridges by asking her to “hold up” the car every time we go over a bridge on a road trip. She has to hold her hands up above her head, stretching as high as she can reach, until we are over the bridge. Even when not on a bridge, you’d be surprised how much time this road trip game can fill for a small child.
Scrap booking: Before a big trip, toddlers are aware of a great deal of excitement, and have an idea that they are off to some sort of adventure, though they may not always understand why. The road trip portion of the trip can provide some confusion for the toddler, since he’s not always sure why there was so much excitement about sitting in the car for extended periods. One way to help remind him of the excitement to come while still engaging him for the duration of the road trip is to give him a small tablet or pad, some stickers and colored pencils. He can build a toddler’s version of a scrapbook in preparation of the trip. Most large stores sell some scrap booking materials that would work for a toddler (stickers, buttons, etc.) and so do many larger chain stores. The toddler can discuss with you what he will see and do while on vacation while creating what amounts to a sticker book with coloring pages. This could also work on the way home as a way to reinforce memory of the trip you have just taken.
Toys: We like to purchase a handful of new toys for our daughter before big trips. On the road trip, she can unwrap or receive one new toy every hour or two. By purchasing small trinkets at a dollar store or on clearance, we don’t spend a lot of money but can “buy” a lot of enjoyment for our toddler, who sees these new toys as a novelty.
Road trips with toddlers can be a lot of fun. We have taken ours on several, and have never taken a DVD player or electronic entertainment. There are a few ways to minimize the boredom, including leaving extremely early in the morning so that the toddler spends at least a portion of the trip sleeping, and stopping often to get out and stretch or play. However, for most long car trips, there will be at least a couple of hours in which a toddler will be awake and bored. These games help cut down on that boredom for our toddler.
