Mobil Shares Classic Travel Games for Long Family Drives

February 16, 2009

As every parent knows, the key to backseat harmony can be as simple as knowing a few silly games to help pass the time on long trips. We were cruising the media site at Mobil 1 and found this collection of fun games you can play in the car, simple games that are fun for kids of all ages - even the grown-up kind. But please, don't let back-seat games - or anything else - distract you when you're driving!

Fun With Words
Build stories together two ways. First, try telling a story one word at a time. Each person adds a word, building on the last word and adding to the story. Another version of this game is for each person to tell part of the story for one minute. At the end of that minute, the story passes to the next person, who continues the story for another minute.

Twenty Questions
You know how it goes. Choose a familiar person, place or thing, then have everyone take turns trying to figure out what it is. Each person asks a series of "yes" or "no" questions. As long as the answer is "yes," the person gets to keep asking questions. When a question is answered "no," question asking moves to the next person. The asking continues until the game is solved or twenty "no" answers have been given.

Choose A Side
This game works best with two people. First, each person chooses a side of the road. Next, choose something to count and something to avoid - like horses and haystacks. Each person counts the number of horses on their side of the road. If they see a haystack, they lose their horses and have to start over. Whoever has the most horses at the end of the game wins.

Back Seat Bingo
Whether you choose road signs, license plates or random objects, create 5 X 5 game grids and place descriptions in the squares. For example, a row of road signs could read "RR X-ing," "Yield," "Merge," "Falling Rocks" and "Stop." Players mark an "X" in each box as the objects are found. The first to get a row of five going down, across or diagonally wins.

A To Z
Have the kids write the alphabet down the side of a piece of paper. Have them look for objects that begin with each letter and write them down. The first to complete their alphabet wins. The A to Z search can be wide open or specific to a topic, such as cars.