by Rachel Knowles

Created on: July 27, 2009

The excitement of going on holiday with a young family is all too easily tempered by the dread of a long journey with a car full of whining children that must be endured to get there. The advent of Nintendo DS consoles, iPods and in-car DVD systems is a blessing, but even these can pall after a few hours.

Our family of four daughters have survived car journeys by a combination of story tapes, sing-along sessions and a variety of games, which even in their teens they still revert to occasionally.

I Spy

One person chooses an object and says what letter it begins with and the others guess. "I spy with my little eye something beginning with..." Perhaps not an obvious choice for a journey as you need to choose an object that will be around for several miles, but certainly older children can be very inventive in their choices.

First person to spot

This is a variation on I Spy that works much better when you are travelling, as the object being spied might be long gone before it is guessed. It is incredibly simple, but has occupied a major role in car journeys in our household for years. One person chooses an object, such as a motorbike or a red door, and the others have to spot it. The first one to spot it takes the next turn.

Traffic competition

Different children are given or choose a different vehicle or object and they race each other to get to a certain number e.g. twenty lorries, roof boxes or caravans.

Lotto

This game takes a bit of preparation, but is worth the effort. Prepare a sheet for each child with a grid of objects on it that they must spot. For younger children, you can download pictures from the Internet; older children could just have words. When they spot each object, they cross it out with a pencil and the first person to cross out all the objects on their sheet wins. If you know the route, it is possible to put in some landmarks that you know you will pass, which gives an added dimension to the game.

Number plate games

There are a variety of games that can be played with number plates. In the UK, the number plates are date specific and so it is possible to start with spotting a new car and try to find increasingly old cars in sequence.

Another game is to take the letters on the number plate and try to make the longest word that you can with the letters still in sequence e.g. RG54 GGC could be gigantic.

One word story game

This was a favourite at one time, but can get very silly! Each person takes it in turn to say one word and a story emerges. A word of advice: agree beforehand that no one must tell anyone else what they have got to say otherwise it can come to a sticky end where one person is trying to make the others tell the story the story their way.

Memory game

One person starts by saying: "I am going on holiday and in my suitcase I have packed..." The next people then have to repeat the item the first person chose, and then add an item of their own. The object can be as sensible or silly as people chose, from a pair of goggles to an elephant! It is possible to vary this game by choosing a different opening sentence, such as: "I am going on holiday and I while I am there I am going to ..."

20 questions

One person chooses a character, either real or fictional, and the others have to take it in turns to ask questions to discover who they are. You can vary the number of questions according to the children's ages or carry on until they guess or give up.

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