Car Games

Gearing up for a family vacation is a lot of work. Packing, planning, mapping, and gassing up for your long awaited get-away make up only half the battle. If you’re driving and you have children, the war is just beginning. Before you cancel your plans because of the haunting echoes of “are we there yet?” ringing in your ears from last time, plan some car games for your kids to pass the time.

Granted, many vehicles today come equipped with TVs and DVDs, and even if your vehicle isn’t equipped with one, portable ones are easy to come by. However, as with everything else, this form of entertainment only lasts so long with kids. Fortunately, there are some great car games you can play with your kids to help the miles fly by.

Be advised that some car games require an adult to offer minimal assistance and so should not be played if the only adult in the vehicle is the driver. Some car games are designed for longer distances, while others are perfectly suitable for shorter trips.

There are so many car games you can play and so many variations of each one that is impossible to list all the possibilities here. A brief compilation includes the following. Try and find license plates from all 50 states. Try and find something that starts with each letter of the alphabet. Count cows as you pass them for points, but loose all your points if you pass a cemetery. Make up stories about the drivers who are beside you. Many, many possibilities exist for turning your trip and the things you pass into a game.
If you aren’t into observing things or playing these kinds of car games, then look for car games in the toy isles. There is a wide array of travel games from Connect Four to Hungry, Hungry Hippos. Some are single and some are multi-player. They are miniature versions of their tabletop counterparts, usually with special storage for parts and other features that make them convenient to travel with.