Keep calm and car(ry) on with my list of car games for kids that encourage entertainment and education. Some require planning (cards, boards, and apps), while others are equipment-free for an easy ride.
You can read all of my game guides here.
Also, here are GTQ’s family games.
Visual Road Trip Games
I Spy
“I Spy” is a classic road trip game for kids that has stood the test of time over decades of road trips worldwide.
The game’s objective is for players to take turns spotting objects outside the window and describing them with the phrase, “I spy with my little eye.”
This game is perfect for kids of all ages, simple enough for a 2-3-year-old to get involved without being too simple for the older kids.
License Plate Scavenger Hunt
License Plate Scavenger Hunt is another class option with a blend of simplicity and engagement that will get the whole car involved.
In this game, children search for license plates from different states or countries throughout the journey, and the one who spots the most plates wins.
This activity is perfect for older children who can read and recognize numbers and letters, and it should be noted that children under roughly 5 years of age will most likely not be able to participate at the same level as the older kids.
Color Car Count
Call out a specific car color, and players count how many they see within a set time frame.
This engaging visual game is perfect for children of all ages, though the game’s competitive nature only goes into the play for the slightly older crew.
The overly simplistic nature of this game will tend to have a short time limit for the older kids, and if you are looking to extend the game, you may have to incorporate more rules, such as specific patterns or a quicker time frame.
Alphabet Race
Another classic road trip activity, the “Alphabet Race,” is a visual game that encourages everyone to keep their eyes planted out of their window, soaking in their surroundings.
The game involves looking out the window for objects that begin with each alphabet letter, going in order.
Naturally designed to be collaborative, each player works together to find an object that starts with each letter as quickly as possible.
If you are looking for something more competitive than collaborative, you could set up the game so that whoever finds an object that matches a given letter earns one point, and whoever has the most points once you reach ‘z’ wins.
This game is suitable for small children who are learning their letters and can observe their surroundings, and by making the game more competitive you could get kids of all ages enthusiastically involved.
Car Make and Model
The objective of “Car Make and Model” is to Identify car makes and models and keep a score for each correct guess.
This family car game is a great visual activity that anyone with a decent understanding of various car types could compete in, and those with a lesser extent of knowledge will contribute some humorous guesses that will keep the whole car laughing.
You may think that this game would only be suitable for older children, but you may be surprised by a three-year-old’s encyclopedic knowledge of cars.
Counting Cows
The “Counting Cows” game involves counting how many cows you see on your side of the road, and the player with the most cows wins.
Obviously, you will need to be traveling through areas that commonly have cows along the side of the road, but that is bound to come up throughout your journey.
Even if the spotting of cows is not as common on your journey, that will just make the game that much more challenging and exciting when one does come up.
This activity is suitable for small children who can count and enjoy observing their surroundings, and it always makes for a humorous situation when a crowded car full of kids starts screaming with glee at the sight of cows.
Cloud Shapes
If you are looking for a car game for the family that is simple and easy to join in on, consider “Cloud Shapes.”
As long as there have been languages, there have been people lying in the grass describing the shapes of clouds above them.
The “Cloud Shapes” game involves this same theme, with players gazing out of their windows and comparing the clouds above to different things like cars, boats, or animals.
This visual puzzle game is perfect for small children who enjoy finding shapes in the clouds.
Wordplay Road Trip Games
Memory Game
The Memory Game is a relatively complicated but incredibly engaging game of memory and repetition, requiring everyone to pay close attention.
It begins with one player saying a word, and each subsequent player must repeat the previous words in order, adding their own.
For example, the first person could say “green,” and so the second person would say “green bird,” and so on until the series of words could be as long as “green bird, telephone wire, strands of spaghetti noodles in butter.”
This memory-based game is enjoyable for older children who like challenges, requiring a level of intensive thinking that younger children might not be able to keep up with.
Sing-Along Session
When you have had enough competition and engagement, plug in your aux cord and put a hit song on the speakers.
There is no competitive objective to the game, you just put on a favorite song and have everyone join in.
This game is perfect for kids of all ages, especially younger children who may not be able to compete in the other games and want something fun to do with everyone.
Tongue Twisters
Take turns challenging each other with tongue twisters for hilarious results.
A tongue twister is any phrase that is especially hard to pronounce, often involving a staggered series of sayings that all feature similar sounds, tend to rhyme with each other, and are organized in an awkward structure.
Common tongue twisters include the famous ‘She sells seashells down by the seashore’ and lesser-known twisters such as ‘No need to light a night-light on a light night like tonight.’
This wordplay game is perfect for older children who enjoy challenges, and if you are looking to make the game more competitive you could turn it into a tournament, seeing who can pronounce the saying more quickly without messing up the phrasing.
Rhyme Time
Rhyme Time is a great verbal challenge that gets everyone thinking quickly and stretching their vocabularies.
One person says a word, and players take turns coming up with the equivalent rhyme.
For example, if the first person says “train,” the next person can say “plane,” and the following person would say “grain.”
Once someone hesitates and fails to come up with a rhyme, they are out, and the round moves on without them until there is a winner.
Conversational Road Trip Games
20 Questions
20 Questions is a great option to get everyone thinking and, more often than not, learn a thing or two about each other.
One player thinks of an object, and others have 20 yes-or-no questions to guess what it is.
This fun game fosters critical thinking and deductive reasoning, making it an enjoyable choice for older children during long road trips.
While the standard rules apply mostly to older children, it is easy to accommodate younger kids as long as you make the ‘object’ something easily recognizable, like a favorite movie character or a character from one of their favorite stories.
Storytime
Storytime is an engaging conversational game that can either become a collaborative masterpiece or quickly fall off the rails and become a hilarious disaster.
Each person adds a sentence to an ongoing story, creating a collaborative and imaginative narrative.
The kicker to this game is that each player is entirely reliant on each other’s contributions, taking the sentences that everyone has built before you and guiding them along their way through a story.
If the rest of the car-mates work with you with serious intent, you can make a fascinating piece of storytelling that was built with everyone’s eager collaboration.
More often than not, though, the story quickly spirals into a hilarious mess once one or two people begin contributing sudden twists and turns, derailing the whole story in a new humorous direction.
This engaging activity entertains older children and sparks creativity as they contribute to the ever-evolving story.
Smaller kids can get involved relatively easily, but watch out because the story will immediately change in a sudden direction every time it is their turn.
Would You Rather?
In Would You Rather? players go one-on-one taking turns asking each other humorous questions, sparking laughter and creativity.
In the traditional setup of the game, one player asks another a question that starts with ‘would you rather…’ such as ‘Would you rather eat a raw egg or go back to middle school science class for a day?’
What makes this game entertaining is the ‘why?’ that comes after their answer, usually revealing humorous reasoning that makes one bad option better than another worse option.
This thought-provoking game is enjoyable for older children during road trips, encouraging players to stretch their comfort zone and make some funny reasons why they would rather do a given unfavorable option.
Smaller children can participate, but as it usually goes with these things, the topics will become zany and often verging on potty humor once the toddlers and 2-4-year-olds get involved.
Road Trip App Games
Song Pop 3
Song Pop 3 is a great road trip app game for anyone with a decent familiarity with hit songs.
The beginning of a hit song will play, starting with a length of 3-4 seconds and ending with incredibly short intervals that can be very difficult to detect.
The player has to guess which song is playing by the brief portion of the song alone, challenging their knowledge of music as well as their skills of detection.
This musical game is enjoyable for older children who like music and guessing games and will often result in hilarious attempts from those who may not have the greatest familiarity with pop music.
Trivia Crack 2
Trivia Crack 2 is one of the most popular gaming apps that will get the whole family involved in a game of virtual trivia.
You can choose from various categories: art, music, pop culture, history, math, and science.
This app is the quintessential option for road trip trivia games, and while it has an online component, you can keep the game contained to the participants in the car.
Heads Up
If you are looking for an interactive app that will get the whole car laughing, install Heads Up.
In this game, a player holds the phone up to their head and guesses the on-screen word based on clues from their friends.
Tilt the phone up or down depending on whether your answer is correct or you want to skip to the next word.
This game is suitable for older kids due to the fast pace and the potential challenge of responding to clues quickly.
Road Trip Bingo
You most likely don’t have time to create a bingo card, so download the Road Trip Bingo app to have custom boards designed for you.
To get started, each player opens their respective bingo cards with various road trip sights like cows, red cars, or traffic signs.
Every player gets a different bingo card, and as you go through the road trip and find an item, you mark it off if it is on your board.
As the original game goes, you win once you get a line vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.
Bingo can extend for a long period of time as participants are constantly engaged, and the game can extend to multiple rounds without any additional effort to put together.
Car Board Games for Kids
Bop It
Bop It is a compact game that requires fast reflexes and a tight focus.
There is a small device with various physical triggers, such as a button in the center called “Bop It,” as well as various actions around the exterior of the device, such as “Twist It,” “Pull It,” “Flick It” and “Spin It.”
The device will recite the intended action, and once you hear the command, you engage in the action as quickly as possible.
If you do the correct action in time, you pass the device to the next person, who must act fast to keep the game going.
You can work collaboratively to see how long you can extend the game or work competitively and knock a player out of the rotation once they fail to complete the action.
Due to the quick pace and lightning-fast reflexes required, this game is best enjoyed by older children.
Clue
Clue is a classic board game, and the compact board makes it a great option when in the car.
Each player acts as a detective, traveling around a ‘house’ on the board and attempting to solve a crime.
There is a list of suspects and weapons, and as each player enters a certain room, they will guess, based on their collected clues, which suspect may have committed the crime in that space, as well as the weapon.
The game continues until someone successfully determines the room, the suspect, and the weapon for that crime.
Clue makes for a great road trip board game, involving deductive thinking as well as patience and close attention, this game is best enjoyed by older children.
Boggle
Boggle is a great board game that involves quick thinking and advanced vocabulary.
To begin the game, scramble a grid of letters among a set of letter dice on the board.
With the scrambled series of letters, each participant needs to try to create words out of connecting letters on the board, with the requirement of the letters lining up side-by-side.
This game can only be played by older children with a complete understanding of vocabulary and spelling.
Road Trip Card Games
Taboo
Taboo is traditionally played with a group of four, with two pairs working as a team to guess as many cards correctly as possible.
The timer begins, and the first player pulls a card with a topic, such as a pop culture figure or a movie or book.
There is also a list of words they are not allowed to use in their description, making it especially challenging to get your partner to guess the correct words.
Due to the quick pace and advanced deductive reasoning, this game is better for older children.
Guess Who?
A play (boom boom) on the original Guess Who? board game, Guess Who cards offer a more efficient way of delivery, which is ideal for long car ride games.
Player one takes the red cards, and player two gets the blue.
Both players lay the cards out face up in a 5×5 layout, so you will need some space in the back seat.
Player one chooses a mystery card (yellow), and player two asks questions about the suspect’s face on the mystery card and turns over the cards that don’t fit the profile.
For example, do they have earrings?
Questions about appearance are asked until there are few cards left, and the player can make a guess.
Parents and grandparents like how easy this game is to set up and carry around and that it tests language and memory.
Road Trip Games for Teenagers
Emoji Charades
Emojis are something that anyone of texting age fully understands and relates to, which is what makes this game all the more humorous and engaging.
The game’s objective is to act out various emojis, and others guess what each represents.
You may start with a simple smile or cry-laughing, but soon enough, the options will become more and more complicated, resulting in some hilarious attempts to recreate the more bizarre expressions.
This fun car ride game encourages creativity and is enjoyable for older children who enjoy acting and visual cues. It also shows that the basis of knowledge requires a relatively advanced understanding of various emojis.
Guess the Emojis
Players are given themes like movies, music, etc.
Using the Notes app, they create a list of movies or songs using emojis to describe the title.
The other players then guess what the movie or song is.
It’s much harder than it sounds!
20-Second Dash
20-Second Dash requires players to find an object outside the car window that matches a specific color within 20 seconds.
This game requires quick thinking and a fast pace.
The Name Game
In The Name Game, players choose a category (e.g., animals) and take turns naming items within that category until someone gets stumped.
It is ideal for older children who enjoy thinking quickly and creatively.
Trivia
Test your kids’ knowledge on topics they love with our extensive list of trivia!
Quizzes tend to have five rounds with five questions in each, and fall into the categories of movies, TV, music, and sports,
We also have this cool guide to quiz rounds, including picture rounds, music, and unusual rounds your kids would never think of.
Additional Road Trip Games
Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament
Host a lively Rock-Paper-Scissors competition, with the winner challenging the next player.
Rock-Paper-Scissors may be one of the oldest games in history, involving three plays that can be made in a one-on-one matchup: rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, and paper beats rock.
Road Trip Olympics
While many of these games are played during the drive, Road Trip Olympics is a great way to incorporate physical activities into the rest stops.
Create physical challenges at rest stops, like jumping jacks or relay races.
There can be a point system to make the game more structured; for example, the winner of each game gets one point.
This active game is great for kids of all ages, motivating everyone to use up their bottled-up energy before they get back in the car.
Final Thoughts
We hope you had a blast with our selection of on-the-road games and activities to do with your kids.
Which one have you tried? Let us know in the comments- feel free to drop more suggestions too!
