Make long car trips for vacations with kids more tolerable with new twists on the classic road trip games you grew up with.
The License Plate Game
What it is: The goal is to find all 26 letters of the alphabet in license plates spotted on the road. The first one to find the whole alphabet wins.
The twist: Give each kid a black and white print-out of a US map and ask them to color in the state as they spot its plate. Kids learning geography while they’re happily playing a game in the car? Sneaky—and brilliant.
I Spy
What it is: Players take turns randomly shouting out things they see along the way using color as the clue (“I spy with my little eye something … blue!”). The rest of the players guess until they figure it out.
The twist: Turn the guessing into a scavenger hunt! Give each kid her own list of things (complete with colors) to spot on the trip, plus a crayon to check them off as she finds them. Download our custom scavenger hunt game.
20 Questions
What it is: The guesser asks 20 questions to figure out the person, place or thing his opponent is thinking of. Guess it within 20 questions or less and you win.
The twist: Narrow down the theme. You can do movies, TV moms, books, Sesame Street characters, favorite snacks, relatives, Disney princesses—all based on your kids’ interests. It’s a great way to get them thinking even harder and stretch the game a little further.
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