Road Trip Ideas & Games » Activities

Quote Boxes

John Andersen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:30:13 +0000

Quote boxes are fun little puzzles that take all of the letters in a quote that you provide and it lines them up into a table. The letters in each column of the table are then mixed up so that you have to decode them.

To generate a quote box puzzle, just type in a short quote in the box below. We will do the rest. You can print out your puzzle and give them to the kids on your next family trip!

Please note — smaller, one to two sentence quotes work the best for young children.

To solve Quote Boxes, drop the letters from each vertical column — not necessarily in the order in which they appear — into the empty squares below them to spell a quotation that reads from left to right, line by line. Black squares indicate ends of words (spaces).

Quote Box puzzle generator

Question Time

John Andersen — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:05:03 +0000

On your next road trip, set aside some time to put away the video games, turn off the portable DVD players, and enjoy an age old road trip activity of getting to know your fellow travelers better.

In order to help facilitate you in this road trip activity, we have created a question generator for your benefit:



5 get-to-known you questions for all ages
5 get-to-known you questions for younger kids
5 get-to-known you questions for teens
5 get-to-known you questions for adults

Enjoy spending some quality, get-to-know you time with your family through these questions. Some ideas to help you with this activity include:

Having everyone answer each question
Have people draw slips of paper with the question on it – they have to answer that question
Provide a reward for each round of questions – maybe a small treat
Have people in the car give their answers for a particular person and then have that person respond

Math Facts Printable Sheets

John Andersen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:12:21 +0000

Math Facts Cards

One way we have kept our kids “entertained” in the back seat on road trips is to give them some math problems to do. If you call it a road trip activity, then they won’t see it as homework!

Use our Math Fact Sheet / Flash Card generator for your next road trip.

Math Fact Generator – Printable Sheets or Flash Cards

Mad Libs

John Andersen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:23:45 +0000

Mad Libs is a word game that everyone can enjoy. A player is prompted to provide a list of words that will later be substituted into a story. The player is first asked to provide nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. once he or she has filled out those words, they are substituted into a story and read out loud to everyone in the car. These word substitutions often end up being very funny and brings laughs to kids and adults alike.

Although the game is especially popular with children, it is also played by adults and parties or leisure activities. Matt lives was invented in the early 1950s by two men: Leonard Stern and Roger Price.

We recommend that you print out a few mad live puzzles for your next road trip. Introduce your children to the concept of mad Libs. We guarantee that they will get a kick out of the resulting story.

Feel free to try out one of the mad Libs puzzles created by our users.

PLEASE NOTE: While we try to monitor these submissions, we cannot guarantee the content will be appropriate and not offensive. Please report a page to us if you feel there is a mad libs that is inappropriate for our family oriented website.

Mad Libs Puzzles

We have provided an online mad Lib generator. Feel free to try to create your own mad Lib customized for your upcoming trip. You can access it by clicking on one of the links below.

Mad Lib Generator

Magnetic Word Activities

John Andersen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:08:46 +0000

Pass the hours away on the long drive with some great brain stimulating activities that will have your kids becoming masters of their native tongue. All you need are a set of word magnets and either a small magnetic whiteboard, or even a small cookie sheet.

There are a number of activities that passengers of most ages can participate in during the drive. Here are a few suggestions from us:

Word Snakes – best for pre-readers or beginning readers
Have the child mix up all of the word magnets on their board. Have them randomly choose a few and line them up at the top of their magnetic board. They can then hand you the board to read out load. You are bound to get a laugh out of random word sentences generated by the youngster.

Dictionary or Reading Skill Activities – best for early readers – or possibly pre-readers
Have the young child do a variety of activities such as: 1) picking out words that start or end with the same phonetic sound (eg. Giraffe & Jerry); 2) selecting words that start or end with the same alphabetic letter (eg. Apple & About); 3) selecting words that have x number of vowels (eg. two vowels: horse, tool, quart); 4) arranging groups of words in alphabetic order.

Hide & Seek – early or mid-level readers
Choose random words and have the passenger look through their jumbled up magnets to find the word. You will need to choose words that their magnetic word kit should include. You can also make a game out of this activity to see how can find the word the fastest.

Magnetic Poetry – best for mid- to upper-level readers
Have the passengers take all of their magnetic words to arrange a subset of them into a unique poem. This is bound to generate some laughs when they get to recite their newly generated poems to the rest of the travelers in the vehicle.

Just in case you don’t have word magnets of your own, we generated a search for popular word magnets on Amazon.com. Simply click on this link: Word Magnets @ Amazon
Please note, we can not be responsible for results returned by Amazon through this search link.

Customize Your Face!

John Andersen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:02:41 +0000

Take drawing in the car to the next level with an inexpensive mirror and a handful of dry erase markers.

During that long trip, pass out the mirror and markers to your children. They are likely to spend the next hundred miles or so drawing mustaches, horns, freckles and more on their face through the mirror.

The instructions are easy:

1. Look directly in the mirror
2. Take a dry erase marker and start to draw facial features on the mirror to enhance your face
3. Pass the mirror around so that everyone can get a good laugh at your new creation on their own faces

It may be handy to include an old washcloth or even a handful of paper towels to clean the mirror off between each use.

Anagrams

John Andersen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:55:04 +0000

Anagrams are words, phrases, or sentences that are created by mixing up the letters contained in that string. Anagrams have been a popular activity for many centuries. Anagram puzzles even date back to the Roman empire in the middle ages. They are a great way to challenge the mind and keep children mentally engaged during a leg of any road trip.

In a typical anagram puzzle, a person will attempt to form a valid word by unscrambling the letters presented. For example, the anagram string of: DAHIO would be rearranged to become the word IDAHO. Another level of anagrams presents a word that it is valid in your language. However, the letters of that word can be rearranged to form another word.

We have provided a random list of anagrams that can be auto generated for your enjoyment or the enjoyment of your children. We have categorized these anagram puzzles according to age level. The level that you choose will determine both the complicated nature of the word as well as the number of permutations that the word has gone through.

Feel free to print out any number of our anagram puzzles and take with you on your next road trip. Enjoy!

The Anagram Lists
- – - LEVEL 0 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 0

25 Anagram Words at Level 0

50 Anagram Words at Level 0

- – - LEVEL 1 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 1

25 Anagram Words at Level 1

50 Anagram Words at Level 1

- – - LEVEL 2 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 2

25 Anagram Words at Level 2

50 Anagram Words at Level 2

- – - LEVEL 3 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 3

25 Anagram Words at Level 3

50 Anagram Words at Level 3

- – - LEVEL 4 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 4

25 Anagram Words at Level 4

50 Anagram Words at Level 4

- – - LEVEL 5 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 5

25 Anagram Words at Level 5

50 Anagram Words at Level 5

- – - LEVEL 6 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 6

25 Anagram Words at Level 6

50 Anagram Words at Level 6

- – - LEVEL 7 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 7

25 Anagram Words at Level 7

50 Anagram Words at Level 7

- – - LEVEL 8 – - -
10 Anagram Words at Level 8

25 Anagram Words at Level 8

50 Anagram Words at Level 8

Spelling Words

John Andersen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:47:16 +0000

If your children are like mine, they enjoy being challenged mentally. We have found that our children enjoy being quized on familiar spelling words at brief intervals of our road trips.

In order to facilitate the use of road trip spelling bees, we have created some spelling word lists and grouped them according to different word levels.

These lists are by no means scientifically selected. We simply chose words that we thought fell in the same area of difficulty. We numbered our levels from 0 to 8 with the general idea that Level 0 would fall somewhere around the pre-school – kindergarten range. Each level beyond 0 should increment by one grade level (eg. Level 1 is Kingergarten – First Grade, Level 2 is First Grade – Second Grade) etc.

Start your child on a level that you feel will be easy for them and then build up. The last thing you want to do is start off on a level that is too hard that will discourage your children. Start easy and build up – this will keep their confidence high and will make the road trip spelling bee more enjoyable for them.

The Spelling Lists
- – - LEVEL 0 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 0

25 Spelling Words at Level 0

50 Spelling Words at Level 0

- – - LEVEL 1 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 1

25 Spelling Words at Level 1

50 Spelling Words at Level 1

- – - LEVEL 2 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 2

25 Spelling Words at Level 2

50 Spelling Words at Level 2

- – - LEVEL 3 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 3

25 Spelling Words at Level 3

50 Spelling Words at Level 3

- – - LEVEL 4 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 4

25 Spelling Words at Level 4

50 Spelling Words at Level 4

- – - LEVEL 5 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 5

25 Spelling Words at Level 5

50 Spelling Words at Level 5

- – - LEVEL 6 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 6

25 Spelling Words at Level 6

50 Spelling Words at Level 6

- – - LEVEL 7 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 7

25 Spelling Words at Level 7

50 Spelling Words at Level 7

- – - LEVEL 8 – - -
10 Spelling Words at Level 8

25 Spelling Words at Level 8

50 Spelling Words at Level 8

Mental Math

John Andersen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:38:10 +0000

GAME RULES:
All computations are to be done mentally. There is to be no writing on paper, on their hands, on the car, etc. Participants may write invisibly in the air and/or use their fingers and body parts. Talking is outlawed. Also, no calculators are allowed.

THE PROCESS
Read a list of computations slowly allowing everyone to make the calculations in their head.

When you are finished with all of the questions, ask if anyone would like a problem repeated.

Once you have finished a list of computations, tell everyone to write down their answer.

Have everyone read their answer out loud to see who all got the right answer.

SAMPLE COMPUTATIONS

10 / 2 … + 10 … * 2 … – 20

The answer would be 10.

These activities can be tailored to the age of the children and their math capabilities. If necessary, do one set of kids for one round, and another set of the children on a subsequent round.

Riddles for the Road

John Andersen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:33:04 +0000

One activity that our family loves to do on the road is to work on riddles together. Riddles can be tailored down to even the smaller aged children.

You could take turns having each person in the car read a riddle (or make up one) for the rest of the vehicle occupants. The family will have a great time taking turns trying to work together in figuring out what the solution is.

We have some riddles that might help you get started. Our riddles are in big letters and their solutions appear directly below the riddle in reverse.

5 Random Riddles on a Page

10 Random Riddles on a Page

20 Random Riddles on a Page