I think When it comes to keeping the kids occupied in the car, a mix of traditional fun and modern technology is perfect. I'm not adverse to downloading a couple of program's from CBBC onto the girls tablets or letting them watch a movie on our fab new portable DVD player but it is also good to encourage them to interact and play.
I'll share with you five of our favourite family car games -
Eye Spy
The classic car game has to be Eye Spy as it can be played by most ages. Younger children can spy by colour, more advanced ones can use the phonetic sounds and then of course you can use the letter name too. The kids never seem to tire of this and whilst it's not my favourite, I much prefer joining in to hearing them bicker.
Tell me a story
My favourite, probably because it has us all laughing our heads off and it also encourages imagination and creativity is to make up a story. One person starts the story and sets the scene and then they stop at an appropriate place for someone else to add the next part. We take it in turns to go round each person in the car and a new twist to the tale starts with each new person. It is really good to finish your part with something like 'and then.....' so the next person has a build up and can continue the story.
Spot the...
If we are on a long drive then we will play spot the car/ animal etc. The motorway is a good place to allocate each person a colour and then try & spot as many cars in your given colour as you can in an allocated time. The winner counts up the most. Country drives are good for farm animals and villages for things like bus stops, village halls and churches.
Lists
I think some people call this scattergories but the basics of the game are that we all agree a topic, such as boys names, girls names, countries, animals, colours etc and then go through the alphabet and have to come up for an answer for all. If we all play including driver, we take it in turns to guess and there is no real winner, it is just for fun. If it is just passengers playing then they have pen & paper or whiteboard and each person guesses as many as they can & gets a score for each good guess and an extra point for any that are not duplicated by another player.
Boxes
The kids all have large whiteboards that they can use it in car, as they are firm it makes them great knee rests for drawing and colouring but it also means that the girls can play games together. Their favourite is probably boxes. You have a grid of dots and each player takes it in turns to join two dots together, either horizontally or vertically, but be careful not to add the third line to any box as otherwise the next player can add the fourth and make a box. They then put their initial inside and they have won that box. Sometimes by one wrong move the next player can claim loads of boxes by again and again putting one line in to claim that box.
These games are some of our favourites that our family play time and time again but I was really pleased to receive some new inspiration in the form of a booklet of 50 ideas for car games from Potters Resorts. At the end of August we are taking a four hour journey up to Hopton-on-Sea to stay at the Potters Resort and I am already really looking forward to it. It feels so nice to be going somewhere new that I have not explored before and also I can't wait to stay full-board - yes four meals a day are included. You can imagine how many games we might get through in 4 hours!
Disclose: I have a relationship with Potters Resorts, as my family have been invited to review one of their holiday breaks later this year. I was not instructed to write this post, I just wanted to share this good find with you.