One of my favorite things about roadtrips (OK, about life in general) is games. I especially like cards and dice. I guess I get it from my Grandmama. She taught me to play Gin Rummy when I was about 8.
For our big road trip, I brought along all our favorites: UNO, Sleeping Queens, Rat-a-tat Cat, Spot It, Spot It Jr, Tenzi, Too Many Monkeys and Muppets Yahtzee. Plus, a few extra regular decks for Nertz. Oh, and Aunt Brandy brought Mancala, which was a big hit!
A new game the girls played is Speedeebee. It’s made by Blue Orange (the creators of Spot It!) and I love them because all their card games come in a cute little round tin! So, not only can you stash it in your purse for when your kids need to be entertained, it’s perfect for a roadtrip when you are slipping and sliding all over an RV or bumping through the hardly-paved roads of Illinois!
Speedeebee is a spelling-ish game. You pick a card and then choose one of three challenges which include using up to four letter dice. For example, “name something you could find at school, starting with one of these letters (throw all four dice)” or “name something you could find in a garden, containing this letter (throw the die of your choice).”
I thought it might be too educational to be fun. (Know what I mean?) But it’s easy enough that you don’t have to be a great speller, but hard enough for kids to have to think. Lydia (rising 2nd grader) and my niece, Nora (rising 3rd grader) played it well together. I loved hearing the words and ideas they came up with. And when they got stumped, we’d all get to jump in and play with them. For example, “a cartoon character with the letter U”? Grandmama quickly said, “Underdog!” That shows the age difference, huh? 🙂
(Do they look tired in that picture or what?!)
Thanks Blue Orange, for sending us Speedeebee to try out!
We love Uno since everyone can play together.
We love to play Quiddler. It’s sort of like scrabble, but with cards.
We are big fans of good ol’ crazy 8 around here!
Our family loves Apples to Apples because it doesn’t matter the group’s size or ages! (Thanks for the chance to win — looks fun!)
My 3 kids found Sleeping Queens, Too many Monkeys, and one of the My First UNO games in their stockings last Christmas based on your previous recommendations. LOVED them all! Would love to try this one!!
YAY! I love this. And it’s b/c of you and your recommendation that we own Sleeping Queens and play it non-stop! (I have 6 and 3 year old daughters)
We love Uno!
Our new favorite is called Spot it! We all really like playing it, and it’s easy enough for my almost 4 year-old to play, and I love it. 🙂
~Jessica
We love playing car games. My kids have made up a game of family trivia. We ask questions about who is who in the family (Who is your papa’s brother?). We also do math games. When I was younger we’d travel to Minnesota (from Va.) and we’d always try to find license plates from all 50 states.
my favorite family game growing up was charades! now, my favorite family game with my kids is HeadBandz 🙂 travel games? we like the classics: I Spy, License Plate Scavenger Hunts, and my husband’s favorite: the Quiet Game! 🙂
We’re loving Zingo, Dominion, and Ticket to Ride. 🙂
Our favorite game is 20 Questions.
We love Spot It too!
I Spy….
We like to play apples to apples and uno. Grandma got us the jelly belly versions of both games, they’re tasty! I’ve wanted to pick up SPot it.
We love Uno and Squence!
Recently we have been playing the game “Would you rather…” when we are out and about. For example, “would you rather be a lion or a tiger?” 🙂 My girls have really been enjoying it and it sparks lots of conversations about why you would want to be that and also about being happy just being yourself!
This game sounds fun!! We really like Travel Bingo. Easy enough for everyone to do, and gets them looking outside the window at the new countryside!
I LOVE that you play Nertz! I don’t know many people that do but we grew up playing that game with friends and family and believe me…it got intense! One of our family friends has a daughter my age and we were ruthless when we played together! Love it!
We love games and road trips too. Right now we are into Sequence, Scrabble Junior, Headbandz, and Skip-Bo as a family. My husband and I are obsessed with Settlers of Catan; thankfully our best friends are too. 🙂
My favorite is “clue” but I have trouble convincing the family to play with me 🙂 So we usually go with Scattergories or Apples to Apples 🙂
We play Set Back and Hand and Foot, which are both card games.
Our family enjoys a guessing game where one person thinks of something and the others have to ask yes or no questions to figure it out. Some of the few categorizations are person/place/animal/thing and specifics are size (is it bigger than a breadbox? – our family name for the game) or is it mobile? It has passed a lot of time on our long rides with a 3yo & 7yo.
We love Cranium! Admittedly, there is a lot of playing with the clay that has nothing to do with the game, but we all have fun with it. When I was doing my teaching degree, every time we were asked to make a game for an assignment, I would always do a Cranium adaptation.
We love Trouble!
My toddlers are all about playing I spy and knock knock jokes…looking forward to moving up!
We LOVE games. I still remember receiving a deck of cards in a honeymoon survival kit my mom gave me at my bridal shower. The room erupted in snickers from the married ladies claiming that was a silly thing to include for one’s honeymoon. They clearly didn’t know us very well. YES, we played cards nearly EVERY day of our honeymoon!
We still love games – especially Dominion, Settlers of Cataan, Euchre and Knertz.
With the kids we play uno, Catan Junior, Ticket to Ride and Go Fish!
I love game suggestions. Off to peruse your recommendations.
My favorite game to play with family and friends is Phase 10
There are so many! We like Uno. Headbandz is a new fun one. The girls like Monopoly even though they don’t really know how to play…and they want to play the regular version. :p They are 4 and 6 years old.
Fun! I will have to check that out for my kids. My 8-year-old just learned to play Rummy from his grandfather when they came to visit. With them we played alphabet spy, which proved challenging in a foreign country that does not commonly use all of the same letters as English.
Always looking for travel games! Looks great!
Thanks for the list of travel games. Love Spot It and just a regular deck of cards. My five year old can play those games until everyone else is asleep. She isn’t always open to new things:-) Maybe I will try one of the others you listed.