Car Ride Games for Kids: Fun Ways to Learn on the Go

Now that all of your summer travel is over, I have the perfect article for you to read. A little late, I know. But hopefully the fresh memories of the screaming, whining, bathroom breaks, and vomit cleaning from your last trip will encourage you to remember to save this post so you have it next time! And we all know fall break is just around the corner and you will convince yourself that you do want to get into a car again for 10 hours with your kids somehow.

We are not a screens family, for many reasons actually. We don’t like how they affect our kids moods when they are done playing them. We don’t like that they don’t know fully how to work all of the games on tablets, so then we have to turn around and get nauseous trying to help them. We think it is good for kids to be bored and to come up with ideas of how to keep themselves entertained on their own. And we think there is value in spending time together and talking when they are stuck in a car and have to talk to us. And probably the biggest reason: all of our kids get carsick. Looking down at a tablet doesn’t help. If screens work for you and you love it, I am so happy for you! But if you fall into my family’s boat…these ideas are for you.

20 Questions— This was always our go to camping game, but there is no reason you couldn’t play it in the car! This is a great game to get little minds thinking about deducing and asking questions to get to the right answer. You know your kid best, so you can make it as easy or difficult as you want. Another spin off of this game would be something like catch phrase for older kids. You could all take turns picking something to describe and see if you can get everyone else to guess it.
The Alphabet Game— The O.G. of travel games. I still play this with my husband sometimes. You start at A and have to find the whole alphabet throughout the drive. Q and Z are always a little tricky! Younger kids could use this printable and look in the alphabetical order if they are overwhelmed by looking for all of them at once.
The License Plate Game—Your kid would need to know how to read to do this one. Unless you use this great free printable I made for you here! This is another game my husband and I play and we get pretty competitive. Anytime we have a long drive, we will print off a map of the United States and whoever calls the state out first gets their name written in on the state. This is a great option if you have an older kid who is learning more about where states are located and what the capitals of the states are. Whoever has the most at the end of the trip wins. We have never successfully found all of the states before the end of the trip but we have gotten close! We also play that you have to call out the capital of the state as well.

Counting Cars— This one kept my kids entertained for 25 minutes on our last trip. That may not seem like much with a 10 hour drive, but every minute that you aren’t hearing are we there yet counts! The kids are just marking the color cars they see off of each row until they have found them all! Luckily there are 4 purple and pinks on here, so it should take a while.

Rhyming game— Rhyming is something we are working on with my oldest in Kindergarten. We had an hour drive last week so we just said words to each other and tried to find rhymes for them. They had fun and it was great feeling like we were working on homeschool even when we were out and about.

Story Builder—This game is great for kids to play as they watch words build on one another to create a full story. It is also good for them to be open minded and not set on the story going a certain way since everyone is participating. So you could do this a couple of ways. Everyone could go around and say one word, building upon the word of the person who went before them, creating a full sentence. Or you could do full sentences and have the next person add their own sentence. It is like mad libs without the paper! It is fun to see where the story goes and it usually ends up being pretty crazy.

I Spy— I want to specify that I do NOT mean picking something outside of the window while driving. I mean using printed sheets with logos like McDonalds and BP for them to check off when they see it. I Spy as we know it is not reasonable in the car. I have tried. It ends with everyone crying. Including me.

Categories— Someone picks a category (Ex: Fruit) and everyone goes around and says one until they can’t think of anymore. To make it a greater challenge, you could do it alphabetically. (Apple, Banana, Cucumber (yes it’s a fruit! Look it up!)). I also would play this game with the states when I was little. You would name them in order alphabetically without forgetting one.

Shopping List Memory—This was my favorite when I was little. It is a memory game. One person starts and says what they would buy from the store. The next person has to remember what they said and add another thing. Continuing on until one person is left standing as the only one who remembers everything that was said. (Ex: apple. Person #2: Apple, tomato. Person #3: Apple, tomato, chicken…)