AP Features, April 23rd, 2007
It's that time of year when people start thinking about summer vacations, and it's also that time of year when I start getting a lot of mail about new products and new books and new gadgets to entertain children in the back seat for a long road trip.
Call me old-fashioned, but a game that you play with nothing more than your brain and your voice is as entertaining as anything you can buy. No batteries required, either, though if you want to beat your 10-year-old, you might want to stop for a cup of coffee first.
Here are some of our favorites.
-Geography. It's our all-time fallback and no matter how many times I play it, I still get stumped on certain letters after just a few go-rounds. To up the challenge, ban A words that end in A. Without America, Antarctica, Africa, Alaska, Alabama, Arizona and Ashtabula as your crutch, you'll be scrounging. (Hint: Go Arkansas! Yeah Akron! And who doesn't love Alsace-Lorraine.) P.S. This is a terrific way to expand a child's frame of reference. You can start little ones playing very early if you team them with a grown-up or older child who can coach them. You'll be amazed at how well they remember names of places they'd never heard of before for the next time you play.
-Math. Quick, add up the numbers on the license plate in front of you. For older kids, multiply.
-Movie-ography and Animal-ography. Same principal as Geography, only with movie names and types of animals. You say the name, and the next person has to come up with something that begins with the last letter of whatever was said by the previous player. It's much harder than it sounds.
-License plates. Keep a running list of how many states you see license plates from. Best played on a trip taken that crosses several state lines from your own.
-Twenty questions: Who am I or what am I. The hardest thing about playing this game with small children is that they're prone to changing the person or thing they have in mind AFTER you've already asked half your questions. So you get half your questions answered when the kid is pretending to be Grandma, and then suddenly the rest of the answers apply to J.Lo.
-Spelling game. I say A. You say C. The next person has to say a letter that will lead to spelling out a word. But the trick is - don't let the word end on you, or you lose! So if you say T, you're sunk with ACT. If you say Z, you'll be challenged by other players asking what word begins with ACZ. Try M, or N, and the next player will be stuck with acme or acne.
I don't love all games of course. No one in our family has ever been able to get through more than a couple minutes of the old, "I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing..." where each person adds something to the basket, and the next person has to remember everything that's been said before.
And "I Spy" really gives me a headache; my kids always pick the weirdest things to spy, so that I'll be guessing everything obvious in sight that's blue, and finally they'll 'fess up that they were staring at a dot of ink on my hand. Besides, the world goes by so fast when you're driving along, the thing you spied at Mile 25 won't be there by the time your opponent has a couple of turns.
You're better off sticking to Geography - whether or not you ban Antarctica.
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