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Taking your kids on a driving trip? Buckle up your seatbelts and get ready for a super-duper adventure on wheels!
We’ve got some awesome road trip activities for kids that will turn your journey into a barrel of laughs and giggles!
After all, fun is the magic fuel that makes every adventure with children a blast.
And it’s not just about reaching the destination; it’s about the joyous memories you create along the way!
The following kids road trip activities are grouped together according to their respective categories for easier navigation- plus, we’ll guide you on how to play each activity.
You’ll get loads of cool examples and fun stuff you can try- from board and card games to wordplays and virtual apps!
For other kid-friendly games, try our Family Beach Games, Zoom Game for Kids and Scotland Facts for Kids.
Table of Contents
Fun Road Trip Activities for Kids
Road Trip Board Games
Get ready for some on-the-road fun with our list of car games for family featuring board games you can try during your trip.
Roll the dice, move your markers, and take on exciting challenges as you journey to your destination.
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 then need to pass the device to the next person, who then has to 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 in time.
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 given 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 App Games
No need to press pause on the fun!
Discover a world of virtual excitement with the following app games- tap, swipe, and tilt your way through thrilling quests while cruising down the highway with the following fun road trip games played on phones and tablets.
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 that 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 a wide range of categories, such as art, music, pop culture, history and even math and science.
This app is the quintessential option when it comes to road trip trivia games, and while it does have an online component, you also have the ability to 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 yourself, so download the Road Trip Bingo app so you can 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, once you get a line vertically, horizontally or diagonally, then you win the game.
Bingo makes for a great long car ride game, as it can extend for a long period of time as participants are constantly engaged and the game can extend multiple rounds without any additional effort to put together.
This visual game is perfect for older children who can recognize common objects and symbols, encouraging everyone to keep their eyes out taking in the sights of the road trip.
Road Trip Card Games
Shuffle up and deal out the excitement with the following card game you can try with the kids during these family car games.
Taboo
For those looking for one of the great conversational road trip card games, Taboo is a great option to get everyone involved.
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 a bit of 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 really like how easy this game is to set up and carry around and that it is testing language and memory.
Road Trip Games for Teenagers
Calling all teen road trippers!
Check out the following fun car ride games you can try that are specially designed for your high-energy escapades.
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 objective of the game 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, as well as the fact 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.
With quick-thinking and a fast pace, this is a great road trip for teenagers looking for a fun challenge.
The Name Game
If you are looking for a conversational game that is fast-paced and competitive, “The Name Game” may be the best option for you.
In “The Name Game,” players choose a category (e.g., animals) and take turns naming items within that category until someone gets stumped.
This game 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 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.
Visual Road Trip Games
Eyes on the road and eyes on the game!
From spotting license plate treasures to counting quirky road signs, the following game suggestions will engage your kid’s observation skills and are sure to make your journey even more exciting.
I Spy
“I Spy” is a classic road trip game for kids that has stood the test of time over decades of road trips around the world.
The objective of the game 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 if you are looking for games to play in the car with kids, 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 competitive nature of the game really 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 all of their surroundings.
The game involves looking out of the window for objects that begin with each letter of the alphabet, 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 the game.
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 laying 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
Calling all word wizards and language champs!
Prepare for wordy wonders and pun-tastic adventures with these games that will keep your brains buzzing.
Memory Game
The Memory Game is a relatively complicated, but incredibly engaging game of memory and repetition, requiring everyone to pay close attention throughout.
This game 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 that 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,’ as well as 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.
This is a great game to play in the car with the family, as it is enjoyable for older children who like language-based challenges.
Conversational Road Trip Games
Engage in non-stop chatter and giggle galore!
Explore games that spark hilarious conversations and create unforgettable memories with your fellow road-trippers.
20 Questions
20 Questions is a great conversational road trip game that will get everyone thinking, and more often than not learning a thing or two about each other in the process.
One player thinks of an object, and others have 20 yes-or-no questions to guess what it is.
This fun road trip 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
When on a road trip with kids, Storytime is a great way to work together and make for some great laughs.
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 along the way.
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 its 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 and derailing the whole story in a new humorous direction.
This engaging activity keeps older children entertained 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 assuredly go in a sudden change of 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.
Additional Road Trip Games
Wait, there’s more? You bet!
This section is jam-packed with surprise games, unique ideas, and extra fun to make your road trip the most epic one yet.
Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament
Host a lively Rock-Paper-Scissors competition, with the winner challenging the next player.
Rock-Paper-Scissors may just be one of the oldest games in history, involving three different plays that can be made in a one-on-one matchup: rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock.
When it comes to car trip games, this simple and interactive game is suitable for children older than three or four, as long as they can grasp the rules of the game fairly well.
Road Trip Olympics
If you are looking for games for the car journey that involve physical activity and exercise, “Road Trip Olympics” is one of the better options.
While many of these games are played during the drive itself, Road Trip Olympics is a great way to incorporate physical activities into the rest stops along the way.
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 all of 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!