Kids Games for Christmas Travel

There is nothing more distracting then the kids in the back seat yelling "are we there yet" and you are trying to concentrate on the traffic that is piling up in front of you. This is a recipe for a car accident, and every parent has been in the same boat at least once in their lifetime. Not all kids have the luxury of the in car DVD system or a game system either. To cure this headache waiting to happen, as parents we need to find things for our kids to do to pass the time while traveling. This Christmas do not be stuck in the middle of I-20 without these games to keep your kids calm, peaceful, and content!

Christmas Traveling Game 1
Car Bingo
Over at www.momsminivan.com there is a section dedicated to this fun game. I actually am thinking about getting it just to have for short trips as well. It looks really fun. The website offerers two different bingo games. The first one is Roadside Bingo that has you look for objects like airplanes, traffic lights, stop signs and much more. The other one is Vehicle Bingo that makes you try to find different types of vehicles like a car, a dump truck, motorcycle, and campers. There is four different cards for each game. And the best part about it, they are all free to print.

The website suggests you use pennies, but we all know how well those pennies will stay on the sheet once the car starts making turns. However, they also made a great suggestions to put the cards in zip lock bags and use dry erase markers to mark off the items they find and then when a winner is declared you can just wipe off the marker and start over! Great idea they had with that!

Christmas Traveling Game 2
License Plate
This is one I use to play when I was a kid and traveling. My parents would simply make two sheets, one for me, and one for my brother with each state listed down the paper in a column. As the cars would pass on the highway we would mark off the state that the car was from. The first one who got all their states marked off was the winner. Of course we never found all 50 states, however we tried our hardest every time we got in the car. I think my parents knew we would never get Alaska or Hawaii but they would never tells us that because then that would mean we wouldn't want to play the game.

Christmas Traveling Game 3
ABC's
I play this with my son all the time, no matter if we are on a long trip or just heading to the store, this game is so much fun and really helps with the pre-k aged kids learn their alphabet and sight words. Basically you have to spot each letter. The first person who gets all 26 letters in alphabetical order is the winner. For example I just passed a sign that said "exit 47 next three miles". I could not say I have an e. You need to get A first, then B, then C and so on.

Christmas Traveling Game 4
Scavenger Hunt
Instead of actually having the child collect items, have them write down words. Before your trip get a piece of paper and start writing down items that you think you will see along the way during your Christmas travel. For example I am from Georgia and I might be going to Tennessee for Christmas (oh I wish!) on my sheet I would put down, a cow, a giant coke bottle (that sits in Atlanta's Baseball field and visible from the interstate), a big peach, a dog, a boat, water and so on and so on. Make sure you pick things that will last the whole trips length and the first one who gets all the items on the list, wins!

There are so many more games, and a ton of them can be found at www.momsminivan.com so I suggest you head over there and check out some great ideas for more Christmas traveling games for your kids.