Best Games to Play in the Car (Fun and Simple Road Trip Games)

by Lyn Lomasi; Co-owner of Brand Shamans &  Write W.A.V.E. Media

Image © Parker Knight; Flickr.com

Road trip games should be low maintenance, cheap, and easy for everyone to participate in. Sometimes the driver cannot participate, but that's OK because the driver's eyes should be on the road. Here are some of the best road trip games for kids or adults to play in the car. These are appropriate for ages 3 and up and many can be adjusted for skill level.

Best Paper and Pencil Games to Play in the Car

Paper and pencil games are some of the simplest games to play in the car and minimal supplies are required - just a notebook and pencil.

Tic Tac Toe Car Game - Pass the paper and pencil back and forth for a car game version of this.

Word Search Race Car Game - Print out a copy of the same word search for each person ahead of time. Have a timed race to see who can find all the words the fastest. These can be easily found on any free printables website or hand written and copied ahead of time.

Drawing Contests as a Car Game - Drawing contests in the car are especially challenging because of the bumpy ride.

Best License Plate Games to Play in the Car

License plate games are a classic during car rides. It can be fun to come up with different variations and see who is up to the challenge.

Numbers to 20 - Seeing numbers on license plates sounds easy enough until you start trying to find the double digits.

Spell This Word - Each player gets a word from the one who played before him to find all the letters for by looking at license plates. The letters must be found in order.

Alphabet Challenge - This car game is like Spell this Word above, but instead all the letters of the alphabet need to be found. This can be done as a team or one person at a time.

Best Puzzle Games to Play in the Car

Puzzle games can take a great deal of time to solve, making them perfect for car games. The best puzzle games for road trips are those with minimal pieces, such as those listed below.

Rubik's Cube - All varieties of the classic Rubik's Cube make great car games because they are are only one piece and can keep a person occupied for hours.

Slide Puzzles - Remember those puzzles that required sliding tiles around to create a picture or number pattern? They're very cheap to come by and usually come in a package of 6 or more.

Best Road Sign Games to Play in the Car

Like license plate games, road sign games are a long-time tradition when it comes to the best car games. Here are a couple of the best ones for road trips.

Find the Word - In this game, the assigned word needs to be in whole and on a road sign.

10 of This or That - Travelers are given a topic and need to find 10 related words on road signs. For instance, if the topic was lakes, travelers might see "Lake Ontario" and "Lake Michigan" as part of their 10 words.

*I originally published this via Yahoo Contributor Network