Fun games to keep everyone occupied.
For players who can read and spell. The first person writes down a letter. The next person adds a letter, and must have a word in mind. The next player adds another letter, again working towards spelling out a word. Next player adds another letter, and so on, until nobody can add another letter. If you think the other player doesn't have a word in mind, you can challenge him, and if he can't tell you the word, he's out.
The Prime Minister's Cat
Start with A and work your way through the alphabet using an adjective beginning with a different letter each time. For example, the first person might say "The Prime Minister's cat is an angry cat," and the second person would respond, "The Prime Minister's cat is a beautiful cat." See how far you can get.
I Spy
Play this using colours with young kids, but for those who can read, you can make it more challenging. How about "I spy, with my little eye, something that ends in L." Or "I spy, with my little eye, something that has a double letter in the middle."
20 Questions
Have one person choose an object or famous person and take turns asking questions to figure out who or what it is. The catch? Only allow 20 yes or no questions to figure out the answer.
Alphabet Game
"One person says: I'm thinking of something — naming the category, like animals or food — that begins with the letter A." Then everyone guesses. Categories can be anything: countries of the world, animals, boys'/girls' names, things you eat, body parts, places in Canada and so on.
The Name Game
Have each child write their name, one letter per line, down the left-hand side of the paper. Then use each letter as the initial letter of an adjective or phrase to describe them. Alternatively, the letters can become the initial letters of words in a sentence. So Daniel might write: daring, adventurous, nice, intelligent, extra-strong, likes spaghetti in the first version, or Daring anything new, I eagerly leap.
Change a Letter
The first person starts off by writing down a word of between three and six letters. The next person tries to change one letter to make a new word. The next person (or the first person again) tries to change one letter to make a different word, and so on until no more words can be made. For example: games, gates, mates, mites.
Licence Plate Phrases
Give each child a piece of paper, and have them write down the letters only from, for example, five licence plates they see around them. They have to then use those letters in order, as the first letters of the words in a short (and ideally funny) phrase or sentence. For example, if the licence is AAYC 665, you write down AAYC and the phrase you could get might be: alligators avoid yellow cars.
Licence Plate Game
Keep an eye out for provincial licence plates and see if you can find one for each province and territory! If you’re travelling in the United States, see if you can spot one for each of the 50 states.
My Favs
Get to know your loved ones better – have each passenger in the car share their top five picks of just of everything they love. Start with ice cream flavours, movies, superheroes and so on.
