h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We used to play a game in the car (aside from I-spy) where we would pick an object ahead (say a lamp post) one of us would close our eyes and say NOW when they thougt we were beside it.Kept us amused for ages...

Alphabet on Signs:
This is a fairly common one, I believe, for car travel. Each person on their own tries to find every letter of the alphabet, in order, on signs, license plates, etc. If more than one person is looking for the same letter, the first one to spot it out loud gets the letter. Usually, even if someone gets far ahead, they get stumped trying to find a particular letter and others catch up. (Keeps the kids looking out the windows )

Alphabet song game:
This one is generally for older kids or adults that also need something to occupy their mind, and works well to keep the driver alert when driving long distances at night (it really helps the time fly!). You rotate through the alphabet -- the first person has to think of a song title that starts with 'A' and then sing the first line or two. The next person has 'B' and so on in rotation. If you play this game, here's a few songs that may help: 'Que Sera', 'Xanadu', 'Zippity Doo-Dah'.
Variations: Music Group names, Names of Films, etc.

Being a caravan owner I used to get my kids to count caravans. One day I was travelling South, spotted a Northbound caravan and missed the turn-off for the M18. I was 7 miles further South before I couls turn round and rectify the error.

Keeping kids occupied in the car is easy, just make sure it's the plural. Two or more children in a car will quite happily amuse themselves with a selection of the following games:

Arm Restling
Pull down the arm rest between the two back seats, then watch in amusement as the children battle it out, making sure their sibling hasn't managed to sneak a nano-meter over the half-way line while slowly moving forward with the speed of an oncoming glacier to try and get that little bit extra space.

The Humming Game
For this you need one child who is the quiet, studious type, and one who is the loud, sadistic type. The first child is required to either attempt to read a book, or simply go to sleep. The second child's challenge is then to attempt a family sing along. The first child will attempt to silence the second by asking the parents to shut them up. The second child will continue to sing, at a lower volume. The first child will then repeat the process, and the second child will sing a little quietter, somehow becoming more annoying. The second child will have won when they don't NEED to sing to distract the first, they will be so busy listening for that mice-on-comb-and-paper voice that any hopes of sleep or reading are banished.

Getting-The-Last-Word
This game requires patience and subtelty. The first player makes a statement, the second player must disagree by saying "No it isn't" or words to that affect. The first player says "Yes it is" and this continues until the parents intervene to shut the pair of them up. Then the game begins properly.

The aim is to wait as long as possible, then say either "Is not" or "Is so" depending on which side you are playing. This must be said so quietly that the parents don't hear you, but the other player does. The winner is the person to get the last word.

The Service Station Game
This is the simplest, but also the one game the players can work together on. You must spot the earliest signpost to point out a serice station/roadside cafe etc. Then you must work together to produce a menagerie of complaints along the lines of "I'm hungy" "I need to go pee-pee" etc. until it gets to the stage where your parents say "I know! Why don't were stop off at a service station?"
NOTE: Saying "Can we stop off at a service station?" is fatal and will immediately destroy any chances of victory, you must make the parents think it is THEIR idea.

Another wordy one that my wee sister and I used to play involved number plates on other cars. We would take the three letters on the number plate and try and make up a sentence/phrase/name that these letters could be an acronym for. No real winners, but it took up a good bit of time, and even our parents could join in.
Also, at Christmas time we used to count Christmas trees in peoples windows. We would race to spot them first.

I'll be honest here... there's nothing better than a handheld games console for any child over the age of about 5. For any child under that age the recommended way to keep them quiet is to allow them to watch the over 5's playing the handhelds. Having a pad of paper and a couple of colouring pens/pencils/crayons is also a good plan.

I hate to admit it, but handhelds are a godsend. They genuinely keep little minds engaged fully. There may be the need to listen to the occasional update report on what's going on in the game, but that's about it.

We play all sorts of spotting games with our five-year old.

The flag game - everytime you spot a flag you make a blowing sound like the noise of a flag blowing in the wind. Keeping score individually or by teams.

The umbrella game - everytime you spot an umbrella you say 'rain, rain'. Again keeping score individually or by teams.

The animal game - in which you get a point for every live animal you spot on the roadside. In Pennsylvania it can get kind of silly with all the cows in fields you'll pass, but it's amusing for about half an hour.

The car game - we pick an odd colour and keep a sharp eye out for that colour vehicle. Amusing and surprising how many purple cars there are on the roads.

The Supermarket Game in which you take turns saying what you bought in the supermarket beginning with a specific letter A=Apple, B=Bread, C=Carrots....Q=Q-tips. It keeps a child learning the alphabet amused for hours.

We sing campfire songs from my old Boy Scout songbook.

And my personal favourite - The Quiet Game in which we sit as quietly as possible for as long as we can. The last one to make a noise is the winner.

Here's a couple of games that kept us busy on long trips.

The question game:
this game is pretty easy, you get a couple of people who are with you and the first person says a queston. For instance "Why are we playing this game?", and the following person has to respond with a question, such as "I don't know, didn't you start it?". etc and so on till someone answers with a statement, or someone who is not playing goes insance and attacks with semi-automatic weapons

The other game is kind of similar, somone picks a letter of the alphabet and comes up with a phrase, then the successive people take the next letter in the alphabet and come up with another phrase. It usually makes more sense if the person who comes up with the next phrase make it pertinant to the previous, but it doesn't have to, some of the funnier games were when someone would come up with something totally out of nowhere. To make this game longer and more likely to cause the same sort of result as the first game I mentioned, cycle the alphabet, i.e. don't stop at Z, keep going throuhg it again till someone screws it up.

Then there's a game called 'Dutch Car'. Whenever you see a Dutch car you yell "DUTCH CAR!!" The way to spot a Dutch car is that they have yellow number-plates on the front. It gets a bit silly in Holland, though.
It is also best played in Europe.
South-East England in the summer is also a good place.

¦M¦

Spotting Dutch cars is easy. They always have something "on" them: towbar (obligatory), caravan, trailler, bike racks etc. etc.
We look out for Belgian cars and shout (with a silly accent, of course) "I told them we already got one" for some reason.
When we were kids we used to play the see-who-can-make-the-Polo-last-the-longest. Which was boring really because Dad always won.
Then we used to sing 3 Blind Jellyfish for about 6 hours.
And (since we live in Germany and your numberplate tells you where the car is registered) we used to look for numberplates from places nobody else had heard of. Actually I still do this even when I'm on my own in the car.
And we used to look at a car and try to make a story about where they had been and where they were going.
Waving at convoys of soldiers during the exercise season (spring/summer)
Looking for Christmas trees in lorries (appropriate season)
First one to spot........ gets a sweet or something. (but then everyone else used to get one too, so that's a bit hopeless)

Games are always good. One that we would play is looking for the car with the oldest number plate (only for the UK and this was before the single letter was at the front). So getting an 'A' was what you were looking for. In Germany you always try and work out where the car had come from. However, on really long trips nothing would work for ever - not Monty Python, not games, and eventually it came down to getting out the squash raquet and waving it threateningly in the back of the car. This quieted you up sharp Until later.....
BCNU - Crescent

Dammit dammit dammit. I used to have a book full of things to do on long journeys that I used to do when I was younger. But I've lost it. (ahem)

Errmm

Songs! She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes....

More numberplate games! Take the letters of the car numberplate and attempt to make a funny phrase out of it, using the letters as the initials of a phrase, eg M238 AMD, Mandy Ate My Dad.

What else what else..

I have a book with games but it has disappeared.
A HUGELY popular one with us was the car-count.You would pick a type of car (we used to play it with minis nad my dad would always sing/say "who is going to spot a mini dun-dun dun-dun" not so many minis now though-suggest nissan micras) and everyone would keep count (You have to call it ,of course;and only one person could 'spot' a car).The person with the largest score at the end of the journey wins.You can also play it up to a certain number.We played a massive game up to 100 that lasted months.

This is one me and my brother used to do.

One player names a town/city eg London

the next person had to name a town beginning with the last name of the pervious town/city in this example Newcastle would do.

No repeats of towns are allowed, and the adults can join in as well, either in teams or as seperate players. Towns ending in Y are particularly mean but as an older brother I learnt as many of these and those starting with Y as possible.

A Variation for older and well travelled by rail children.

Use train stations.

There used to be loads of wee books, you used to be able to get from garages - the I Spy collection, where you had (at least in one of them) to collect all the different things in the book, I am pretty sure the other books had different things to do....
BCNU - Crescent

There's always the classic I don't spy... & on coach journeys with school we used to play cheat. One person would be the table, and hold the pile of cards...

This is actually an American Drinking Game. . .But I suppose I'll share it and alter the rules slightly for the benefit of parental sanity. Both sets follow.

It's called "The Name Game"
The rules are quite simple:
A: You have to be quiet when it is NOT your turn.
B: (Adult Drinking Rules): You have to drink while you think.
B: (Family style): Hum "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah" or some equally repetitive tune while you think.
C: A double reverses the rotation.
D: (ADULT) A repeat of a name is half a drink.

Quite simply, you have to come up with the name of a celebrity, (or literary figure, cartoon character, etc.) that would be commonly known to at least two of the participants, whose first name begins with the first letter of the previous entry's last name.

For example:
1: John Cleese >>
2: >> Clive Anderson >>
3: << Adam Ant <<

The third one reverses the order since the first and last name begin with the same letter. . .
Quite honestly it is more of a drinking game for around campfires and other situations where one is meaning to get a bit pissed without the benefit of cards or other devices, but I suppose it would work to keep kids occupied for a bit, and especially the bit about keeping them quiet.

Anyway, why not simply leave the tots with an Aunt and Uncle and have some fun without them?

I wouldn't recommend the driver be involved in that game

I retold a misadventure tonite wherein the automobile within which I was a passenger discovered the purpose of those safety railings which so clutter the landscape along mountainous roads in the fog earlier this evening. Thank the gods there was one in West Virginia that night. . .August of 1992 along the lake Wikatipu Road Northwest out of Queenstown my brother's only option was to try to control a skid into the mountainside during a loss of control in a hired Holden Commodore. . .Nay the driver should never partake of such nonsense. . .The driver should be telling all else to keep it quiet, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,