Fashion 2013

Games you can play on the go. Compact board games: play on the go and on vacation

After traveling to the country in May, we have a wealth of experience in the question of “what to do on the road.”

How?! Of course to play! Now we’ll tell you what to play on the road! Entertaining games for the whole family are also available on mobile!

Getting ready to sit for a while in the numerous May traffic jams from home to dacha, I suddenly remembered a bookshelf with all sorts of educational, entertaining and developmental books.

“We haven’t contacted her for a long time.” – I thought and began to be actively surprised by the numerous unexpected finds.

In the end, I pulled myself together, fought the desire to take all these wonderful books with me just in case, and settled on two.

Which I didn’t regret later! One of the chosen ones was this soft book, which really helped us have fun on the road.

We found the book very useful and entertaining both on the road and at home. We learned some of the games from it, and there are still a lot of games left in it. Therefore, I recommend it!

Although I have a 2007 edition, I specifically looked and there are some of these on sale now. The asking price is seventy rubles. For example, The best Board games for children and adults on Ozone.

Well, in this article I will briefly tell you about the games that we were able to play while stuck in traffic jams. They all made us happy.

These will be games for the whole family traveling in the car, i.e. all participants in the game had the opportunity to listen, think and speak, but had almost no opportunity to actively move.

Writing, jumping, running, doing something with your hands, all this was excluded. Well, one of our participants is six years old. Therefore, we selected games adjusted for these factors. (Younger Masha doesn’t count. She was content with actively waving her arms and legs, singing songs and other entertainment for those younger).

Game "Forbidden Word"

A forbidden word is invented. One player answers the others' questions. As you wish. There is only one prohibition - you cannot pronounce the forbidden word.

At first it seems that it’s simple, but then you realize that coming up with questions is more difficult than answering them. Then it’s already possible to come up with questions, but what’s the point! The responder can easily make do with an alternative.

And then you move on to the next stage - the realization that in the end, for every answerer there is a topic about which he begins to think deeply in the intervals between answers. And then...

The forbidden word (to begin with, of course, it is always the words “yes” or “no”) escapes the lips of the daydreaming respondent.

Really curious! Both in play with a child and with an adult. So, even if you are traveling without children, it doesn’t matter – I highly recommend it! You will learn a lot of interesting things about each other! 🙂

Game "Guess the word"

The presenter thinks of a word. And says the first letter. For example "K".

Players ask questions. For example: “Is this an animal?”

And the presenter, if a beast is guessed, must answer in the affirmative, but if this is not the case, he needs to remember the beast starting with the letter “K” and answer like this, for example: “No, it’s not a Horse!”

If he succeeds, the players ask the next question. If he could not come up with an animal starting with the letter “K,” then he says the second letter of the hidden word.

For example, if the word “bed” is guessed, then he informs everyone that the next letter is “R”. And the players continue their questions, only now they have to come up with questions about words starting with “KR”. Good for playing with a child.

Game "Right Left"

We came up with this game ourselves while we were driving in the car. It perfectly develops spatial thinking, and at the same time helps children remember well where is right and where is left.

First you need to decide who or what your game players will be.

Let me give you an example:

We are driving in a car and we are positioned like this: Dad is driving (on the left), next to Mom, between us is a plush dog Oreshek (especially for playing), behind Dad is Marina, behind mom is Masha, between Marina and Masha is a plush dog tube.

We are the players, the chips, and we are arranged in this three-by-two grid:

dad Nut mom

Marina Tube Masha

We decide on a leader and

Let's start the game

To do this, the presenter announces which player he starts the move with and then quickly lists the sequence of moves. Then he says “Stop!” Whoever is the first to correctly guess which player the presenter chose wins.

For example,

the presenter reports:

“Nut, Right, Back, Left, Forward, Left, Back, Right, Right, Left, Forward, Left, Back, Stop!”

Whoever guessed first that the correct answer is “Marina” is the winner!

It is not at all necessary to travel in a car for this game, the main thing is that the players create a closed space - a grid of moves, so to speak.

Rhyme game

There we also found a description of our favorite rhyming game. Actually, the game is that one says a word, the others come up with a rhyme. Who's faster? We often play it in the car.

Tautogram game

For me, in the “Word Games” section you can find a lot of very entertaining games for every taste and age. We stopped at one more game, and it occupied us for the rest of our trip.

It's called a tautogram. More precisely, a tautogram is a poem in which all the words begin with the same letter.

And the game consists of coming up with such rhymes starting with a given letter. That's what we came up with. The first letter that came to our mind was “M”. We tormented her for a very long time. What we came up with was complete nonsense. But nonsense on the road only makes it more fun!

Matryona tried on a fashionable muff,

I kneaded flour, made meringues,

I washed wet mice with a washcloth,

A broom of shaggy chalk kids.

Complete nonsense! But it's fun.

By the way, these same meringues failed us in all respects. Subsequently it turned out that they, generally speaking, are not even meringues at all, but meringue (according to some sources). In addition, their emphasis is on the second syllable. And we would need the first one.

For this occasion, we left the letter “M” alone and came up with a tautogram with the letter “p”. The result is this kind of nonsense:

Quail Polina

She drank the stew and spilled half of it

The rooster came to help,

Plowed the fields, ate the stew

then we took up the letter “SH”:

A bumblebee sews fur coats with an awl,

Sixteen seamstresses sew the hats,

Six chinchillas rustle with silk,

They quickly sew a wide scarf.

By the way, it seems that with each letter our ability to tautogram progresses :)

Well, the letter “D”:

Wooden made house

Uncle Dima with a chisel

Holed with a drill “holes-holes-holes”

I drove the boards to holes

With the letter “d” we got to the Dacha! 😉

About all sorts of other games

I must inform you that the book also contains sections with various games of checkers, dominoes, backgammon, lotto and much, much more. It’s just not a book, but a treasure trove of useful things!

Well, if you suddenly feel like there aren’t enough games on the road, and you want to play at home, then I hasten to please you!

All sorts of things Interesting board games invented for you! After all, it’s really great to sit with family or friends and play an interesting board game.

That's all about what to play on the road.

I hope you were able to decide what to do on the way, and entertaining games for the whole family will help you get there fun!

Write to us!

Maria Kostyuchenko , its author, did a great review for us Games on the road, because the time for traveling and traveling is already very close, and today we will talk about what you can play on the road.

Summer is coming soon! We are all going on vacation and dream of going with the kids to the dacha or to the seaside - and it’s better, of course, to have time to visit everywhere and more than once.

Any of our trips involves a road: in a car, bus, train or plane. And every time we rack our brains: how to keep a child occupied while traveling on public transport, what can he play on the road?

If you prepare suitable games for the trip, then reduce the number parental concerns, of which there are plenty on the road, literally exponentially. Today we will try to give some tips that will help you turn the road into an exciting game. All pictures open by clicking!

Old tray to the rescue!

Let's start with car trips. What is the main problem with playing board games in the car? Everything crumbles, falls and rolls under the seat. Blog author So you think you're crafty I found a solution to this problem. All you need is an old metal tray (game board) and magnetic game pieces. Check out the options! Let us remind you: all images are clickable.

Pockets with interesting things

There is another problem in the car: how to store toys so that they are always at hand, and the child can take them himself if the mother, for example, is driving and the baby is alone in the seat. Authors of the site Martha Stewart found a solution to this problem as well. See what convenient and multifunctional pockets you can hang on the seat in front of or next to your child.

I'm driving!

Every child dreams of being in the driver's seat of a vehicle. 🙂 And it doesn’t matter whether he is driving in a car or flying on an airplane - he will imagine himself at the “helm”. Of course, there are excellent toys in the form of a steering wheel with many buttons and flashing lights, which can be bought at any toy store, but they ring and buzz so loudly and mercilessly... But look at what beautiful steering wheel, also known as the steering wheel, also known as the train control panel you can create one for your child yourself.

Dollhouse

If you are taking a little princess on a trip, who really loves doll houses and games of daughter-mother, and is not ready to sit idle for several hours during the trip, then I suggest you use the idea Laura Bray and create a small but very cute house for your princess on the road.

Drawer Organizer

If you have a real artist in your family, for whom parting with paints and pencils is not possible, then I suggest you please him with a compact folder for creativity on the road. You can use master class from Zhenya Yasnaya and make such a folder from a CD box or sew a small fabric folder with a removable notepad. About, how to do it, I talked about it on the pages of my blog “Learning by Playing”.

So you played, drew, and the child wanted new impressions and surprises. Where can you get them on the road? It is precisely for such a moment that the following idea will come in handy, which is very easy to implement, but the children will receive a lot of delight and positive emotions.

Fairy tale with cotton

The essence of the game is that you give the child a film with popping bubbles, and the child must burst them to make that clicking sound. But just shoveling is not that interesting and can quickly get boring. Therefore, the author of the blog Apartment therapy invites us to add pictures to this game! And then you can pop certain pictures or come up with stories with pictures and pop them as you compose your fairy tale.

There are several more options for excellent games on the road that will not only interest the child for a long time, but will also help him train his fingers and develop speech and imagination.

Labyrinth bag

Lost Container

And finally, another great idea. In this container, any small things for games can find shelter, which usually like to get lost, run away, and therefore traditionally are simply not considered as games on the road.

A non-lost container is a great solution. In addition, the container itself is not so easy to lose, and it is more difficult for it to roll somewhere than a cube, coin or button.

I hope your choice of what to play on the road has now expanded somewhat. 🙂 By the way, in the “Develop it!” section there is another piggy bank on the topic And hit the road— an article written based on materials from the site “This is interesting!” Tatiana Tavika. And if you have your own interesting finds, please share them in the comments!

Have an easy and unforgettable trip!

Since electronic devices with useful children's games can be very useful on the road, we recommend reading:,.

“We’re going, we’re going, we’re going!” - everything is good in this song, especially the rosy mood of the traveling animals and children. In life, unfortunately, everything is not so fun. Traveling with kids, no matter how wonderful the purpose of the trip, can be tiring - traffic jams, queues at the airport, at the border. It is equally difficult for little fidgets to sit for hours in the back seat of a good car, in the seat of the fastest plane and in the compartment of the best train. Travel games and fun, complete with a “magic suitcase,” will help you pass the time and entertain your baby.

My eye is a diamond

This game can be played on the train, in the car, or at the airport while waiting for a flight. First, choose the color of the objects that we will look for, for example, red. And we begin the game: my diamond eye sees a red... car. My diamond eye sees a red apple. My diamond eyes see the red hat. You can search for round and striped things.

I'll take it with me

This is a slightly more complicated version of “My Eye is a Diamond.” Imagine that you are going on a trip and taking some things with you in your suitcase. Make a rule that you will only take... green items. Then you say: “When I go on the road, I will take with me... a frog.” This item must comply with the intended rule. Children ask if they can take an orange with them? Orange is not green, therefore it is impossible. Can I take a cucumber with me? You answer: “You can” (since the cucumber is green). The one who can solve the rule wins.

The rules can be simple (for example, what fits in a briefcase, everything is round, soft things) or complex. For example, your name and all items begin with the same letter. Or all words of foreign origin.

Words

We all know how to play cities - the most common version of this fun. The essence of the word game is the same: come up with words, continuing the chain. The first player names any word, for example, FISH, the next player must come up with his own word starting with the last letter of the word FISH, that is, A. For example, watermelon. The turn moves on to the next one, who must come up with a word starting with “Z”. As a result, we get the following chains: ASH - ABC - ALPHABET - VEST - ANTENNA, etc.

Very clear and simple, younger schoolchildren play confidently with words, but preschoolers can actively participate, provided that you introduce the rule of several clues. Children who cannot read yet often come up with the A word - ape. The adult’s task is to correct in a timely manner, unobtrusively explaining the rules. We say “ape” and write “monkey”. When a child takes a long time to come up with a word, so as not to slow down the game, start slowly counting to 10. If the word still doesn’t come to mind, the player skips his turn.
During the game, quite a lot of interesting situations arise when you can argue, discuss something, see a pattern: for example, that words often end in A or O. You can prepare for this situation and come up with as many words as possible for these “tricky” vowels .

Plant, animal, mineral

Remember how the Lion from Lewis Carroll's famous work tried to categorize Alice? “Who are you: plant, animal or mineral?” So we often played this entertaining “guess” game, winding kilometers through different cities and villages. The rules of the game are as follows: the leader makes a wish for some animal, plant or mineral. The task of the rest is to ask questions and guess what it is? It should be noted that supporters of TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) consider the ability to ask questions to be a very important skill for a child’s development. At first, such games require the active participation of adults.

Here is one of the scenarios for our “plant, animal, mineral” game. A 9-year-old child asked us a very difficult riddle.

    Is it a plant, animal or mineral?

    This animal.

  • Is this a mammal?
  • He has four legs.
  • No. But there are limbs.
  • Does it have fur?
  • Yes and no.
  • Does he live in holes?
  • Is this a pet?
  • Yes and no.
  • Is this a wild animal?
  • Yes and no.
  • Can it fly?
  • Is it crawling?
  • Sometimes.
  • Does he have a developed brain?
  • This is a man!

This is how the riddle of the Sphinx turned out.

Good bad

Together with your child, figure out what you want to talk about - some event or phenomenon. For example, it is raining. What is so good about it? Plants receive moisture. No need to water the garden. You can splash around in puddles in your boots. No need to wash the car. You can see a rainbow. You can wash yourself in the summer rain. Mushrooms grow in the rain. When all good options exhausted, we move on to searching for bad consequences. It's raining. You can’t go for a walk, it’s too wet and cold, there are floods, crops are lost in the fields, when it rains for too long, you can get wet and catch a cold, animals are hiding, they are cold and you won’t see them. This game teaches you to look at events from different points of view.

Snowball

You say any word that comes to your mind. The baby repeats your word and comes up with his own. You repeat the first two words, adding a new word. So the words grow like a snowball. If you practice often while playing, you can repeat more than 20 words at a time. Very useful activity for kids, as it develops memory and attention. It’s also interesting to play “snowball” with the plot:

Once upon a time there lived a giant on a mountain, one day he fell into a trap (the child continues), they put him in a closet, and a cockroach caught his eye.

I'm packing my suitcase

“I’m packing my suitcase,” you say, “And putting toothbrush, socks, mirror, comb"... Ask your child to repeat everything that you put in the suitcase. If the child remembers everything that you put, let him also add something of his own. This game resembles a “snowball”, but is thematically related with the road.

Roses - frost

For any word you need to come up with a rhyming word. For example, you say: stick. A child is a jackdaw or a rolling pin.

Poker

A very funny game, especially among preschoolers. Ask your child to choose a name from kitchen utensils: poker, plate, fork, knife. Now say that you will ask questions, and all questions must be answered “Poker.” Warn that you are not allowed to laugh (although this is unlikely).

  • The name of?
  • Poker.
  • What's on your nose?
  • Poker.
  • What do you eat?
  • Poker.

    • Who are your grandparents?
    • Pokers.

Numbers

As children, we counted poles, crossings, and crows. You can count together all the bearded men, all the dogs, all the cats, all the trucks.

Number plates

Each of you chooses any number from 0 to 9. Task: find 5 cars with license plates containing the selected number.

Here!

We play this game in the car. I choose an object that can be seen from afar - for example, a tree or road sign. All the passengers close their eyes, and when they think we are passing a tree, they shout “here!” Whoever is closest wins.

The lady sent you a hundred rubles

This game can be played anywhere, anytime and in any weather. The essence of the game is that the presenter asks questions. When answering questions, you can’t say “yes”, you can’t say “no”, you can’t choose black or white. You need to remember the saying:
“The lady sent you a hundred rubles,

Buy what you want,

Black - don't take white,

Don't say "yes" or "no".

Will you go to the ball?

"Yes!" - the baby screams joyfully. And... the game starts all over again.

Another version of the counting rhyme:
“The young lady sent you a piece of blanket She told me not to laugh Don’t make your sponges into a bow, Don't say "yes" or "no" Don't wear black and white. Will you go to the ball?
In this version, you cannot laugh while answering questions.

Game first aid kit

With you on the road, it would be nice to have a magic suitcase or a play first aid kit, in which you can put all the necessary items so that the child is happy and you are calm:

  1. Paper (notepads, notebooks, albums). This universal method take time: paper is good for drawing, for games, for writing down children's impressions and stories, for origami.
  2. Pencils, markers, crayons. Very useful thing on the road. They draw with pencils, count them, sort them, they can be used to build something, and also be used for imagination games, to come up with fairy tales where the characters are pencils.

On the track: games in the car, plane and train familyr_school wrote in June 9th, 2012

“We’re going, we’re going, we’re going!” - everything is good in this song, especially the rosy mood of the traveling animals and children. In life, unfortunately, everything is not so fun. Traveling with kids, no matter how wonderful the purpose of the trip, can be tiring - traffic jams, queues at the airport, at the border. It is equally difficult for little fidgets to sit for hours in the back seat of a good car, in the seat of the fastest plane and in the compartment of the best train. Travel games and fun, complete with a “magic suitcase,” will help you pass the time and entertain your baby.

My eye is a diamond

This game can be played on the train, in the car, or at the airport while waiting for a flight. First, choose the color of the objects that we will look for, for example, red. And we begin the game: my diamond eye sees a red... car. My diamond eye sees a red apple. My diamond eyes see the red hat. You can search for round and striped things.

I'll take it with me

This is a slightly more complicated version of "My Eye is a Diamond." Imagine that you are going on a trip and taking some things with you in your suitcase. Make a rule that you will only take... green items. Then you say: “When I go on the road, I will take with me... a frog.” This item must comply with the intended rule. Children ask if they can take an orange with them? Orange is not green, therefore it is impossible. Can I take a cucumber with me? You answer: “You can” (since the cucumber is green). The one who can solve the rule wins.

The rules can be simple (for example, what fits in a briefcase, everything is round, soft things) or complex. For example, your name and all items begin with the same letter. Or all words of foreign origin.

Words

We all know how to play cities - the most common version of this fun. The essence of the word game is the same: come up with words, continuing the chain. The first player names any word, for example, FISH, the next player must come up with his own word starting with the last letter of the word FISH, that is, A. For example, watermelon. The turn moves on to the next one, who must come up with a word starting with “Z”. As a result, we get the following chains: ASH - ABC - ALPHABET - VEST - ANTENNA, etc.

Very clear and simple, younger schoolchildren play confidently with words, but preschoolers can actively participate, provided that you introduce the rule of several clues. Children who cannot read yet often come up with the A word - ape. The adult’s task is to correct in time, unobtrusively explaining the rules. We say “ape” and write “monkey”. When a child takes a long time to come up with a word, so as not to slow down the game, start slowly counting to 10. If the word still doesn’t come to mind, the player skips his turn.

During the game, quite a lot of interesting situations arise when you can argue, discuss something, see a pattern: for example, that words often end in A or O. You can prepare for this situation and come up with as many words as possible for these “tricky” vowels .

Plant, animal, mineral

Remember how the Lion from Lewis Carroll's famous work tried to categorize Alice? “Who are you: plant, animal or mineral?” So we often played this entertaining “guess” game, winding kilometers through different cities and villages. The rules of the game are as follows: the leader makes a wish for some animal, plant or mineral. The task of the rest is to ask questions and guess what it is? It should be noted that supporters of TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) consider the ability to ask questions to be a very important skill for a child’s development. At first, such games require the active participation of adults.

Here is one of the scenarios for our “plant, animal, mineral” game. A 9-year-old child asked us a very difficult riddle.

Is it a plant, animal or mineral?

This animal.

Is this a mammal?

He has four legs.

No. But there are limbs.

Does it have fur?

Yes and no.

Does he live in holes?

Is this a pet?

Yes and no.

Is this a wild animal?

Yes and no.

Can it fly?

Is it crawling?

Does he have a developed brain?

This is a man!

This is how the riddle of the Sphinx turned out.

Good bad

Together with your child, figure out what you want to talk about - some event or phenomenon. For example, it is raining. What is so good about it? Plants receive moisture. No need to water the garden. You can splash around in puddles in your boots. No need to wash the car. You can see a rainbow. You can wash yourself in the summer rain. Mushrooms grow in the rain. When all the good options have been exhausted, we move on to looking for bad consequences. It's raining. You can’t go for a walk, it’s too wet and cold, there are floods, crops are lost in the fields, when it rains for too long, you can get wet and catch a cold, animals are hiding, they are cold and you won’t see them. This game teaches you to look at events from different points of view.

Snowball

You say any word that comes to your mind. The baby repeats your word and comes up with his own. You repeat the first two words, adding a new word. So the words grow like a snowball. If you practice often while playing, you can repeat more than 20 words at a time. A very useful activity for kids, as it develops memory and attention. It’s also interesting to play “snowball” with the plot:

Once upon a time there lived a giant on a mountain, one day he fell into a trap (the child continues), they put him in a closet, and a cockroach caught his eye.

I'm packing my suitcase

“I’m packing my suitcase,” you say, “And I’m putting a toothbrush, socks, a mirror, a comb”... Ask your child to repeat everything that you put in the suitcase. If the child remembers everything you put in, let him also add something of his own. This game is reminiscent of a snowball game, but thematically related to the road.

Roses - frost

For any word you need to come up with a rhyming word. For example, you say: stick. A child is a jackdaw or a rolling pin.

Poker

A very funny game, especially among preschoolers. Ask your child to choose a name from kitchen utensils: poker, plate, fork, knife. Now say that you will ask questions, and all questions must be answered “Poker.” Warn that you are not allowed to laugh (although this is unlikely).

The name of?
- Poker.

Poker.

What's on your nose?

Poker.

What do you eat?

Poker.

Who are your grandparents?

Pokers.

Numbers

As children, we counted poles, crossings, and crows. You can count together all the bearded men, all the dogs, all the cats, all the trucks.

Number plates

We play this game in the car. I choose an object that can be seen from afar - for example, a tree or a road sign. All the passengers close their eyes, and when they think we are passing a tree, they shout “here!” Whoever is closest wins.

The lady sent you a hundred rubles

This game can be played anywhere, anytime and in any weather. The essence of the game is that the presenter asks questions. When answering questions, you can’t say “yes”, you can’t say “no”, you can’t choose black or white. You need to remember the saying:

“The lady sent you a hundred rubles,

Buy what you want,

Black - don't take white,

Don't say "yes" or "no".

Will you go to the ball?

"Yes!" - the baby screams joyfully. And... the game starts all over again.

Another version of the counting rhyme:

“The young lady sent you a piece of blanket

She told me not to laugh

Don’t make your sponges into a bow,

Don't say "yes" or "no"

Don't wear black and white.

Will you go to the ball?

In this version, you cannot laugh while answering questions.

Game first aid kit

With you on the road, it would be nice to have a magic suitcase or a play first aid kit, in which you can put all the necessary items so that the child is happy and you are calm:

1.Paper (notepads, notebooks, albums). This is a universal way to occupy time: paper is good for drawing, for games, for writing down children's impressions and stories, for origami.

2. Pencils, felt-tip pens, crayons. A very useful thing on the road. They draw with pencils, count them, sort them, they can be used to build something, and also be used for imagination games, to come up with fairy tales where the characters are pencils.

3.Pocket kaleidoscope. Cool and inexpensive thing.

4. Books with stickers according to age. A child who is captivated by this activity calmly spends an entire hour at it.

5. Drawing tablet.

6. Favorite picture books.

7. Player (iphone, ipad) for listening to fairy tales, radio programs and podcasts. As practice shows, not all children are auditory by nature (that is, lovers of listening), so this option is not suitable for everyone and not always.

8. Finger puppets (sets of finger puppets are sold in Ikea, as well as other toy stores, and at fairs). Today the so-called “fairy tale on the palm” is sold.

9. A bag of various animal toys and small dolls for games. The more characters there are in the bag, the more interesting and varied the game will be, the longer the child will not be bored.

10. Puzzles (“tag”, Rubik’s cube, “Russian nails”)

11. Games - lacing, mini-puzzles (for example, “Fishing”, where you need to catch fish with a small fishing rod), pyramids.

12. Hole puncher, stapler, paper clips, tape, post-it. Oddly enough, children are very attracted to stationery. On the road, give your child a piece of paper and a stapler and see what happens.

13. Cars, dolls - classics!

14. Cards for playing “pairs” and “memories” (usually with images of animals). Card games“Cat and Mouse”, “SET”, “UNO” are great for keeping preschoolers occupied.

15. Magnetic game “Dress up the doll”, designer “Magnetics”.

16. Plasticine that does not leave marks (on a train, plane, but not in a car).

17. Travel versions of the famous games “checkers”, “dominoes”, “scrabble” for older children.

18. The wonderful game “Parking” in the road version has brightened up our travels more than once. It's a tag game where the goal is to get the red car out of the parking lot by moving other cars.


This is not the first year that we have been going on vacation with our children by car. In addition, our babies are accustomed to traveling by train and bus. But this year we planned our first trip from Kyiv to Aheloy (Bulgaria), 1400 km long. This trip lasts about a day. We divided the road into 2 sections: Kyiv-Odessa and Odessa-Aheloy. This simplifies the situation a little, but it would still be difficult for children on the road if you don’t think through leisure activities for them.

Based on our travel experience, I came to the conclusion that books with tasks, books for looking at, books with short stories, printouts with activities, a tablet with games, small toys, and, of course, a lot of pencils - must have for a long journey.

And now, in order, a list of games for children on the go:

1. Books with tasks, coloring books, labyrinths, stickers, themed kits. These things are extremely helpful on the road. Children are distracted from questions: “When will we arrive? Why so long? Why is everything the same outside the window? “Is it soon?” Instead, they plunge into tasks headlong. Books with tasks and stickers are especially good. This time, coloring pages with animals “Colorful Jungle” and “Colorful Forest” were more useful than ever. We drove along and glued feathers on the parrot, scales on the crocodile, and thought about what animals we would meet on the seashore.

2. Books to look at. These are all kinds of encyclopedias, educational art books, search books a la “I Spy”. They can be played by two or three people at the same time. This is important for us :) We look at illustrations together, discuss them, look for various hidden things, read various facts and stories in encyclopedias. The book “Maps” is especially pleasing on the road. We found Bulgaria and Ukraine in it, drew our path with our fingers, then opened a spread with Romania and Moldova and spent a long time looking at the sights and features of these countries.

3. Short stories. This time we came with a book about the wonderful little fox Harold and the book “Shopping,” as well as mini-stories about animals. These books are light and easy for a child to leaf through. Sima often hovers over such books and begins to come up with alternative stories or retell the plot.

I recorded a separate video about children's books before we left:

Cheat sheet with a list of books:

  • “Encyclopedia of everything in the world in pictures” by Thierry Laval
  • “More than history. Stories for children on history and geography” Yuay Rosa
  • "Harold. The Little Fox Who Outsmarted Everyone” Claudia Boldt
  • “Maps” Alexandra Mizielińska, Daniel Mizieliński

4. Tablet with games. This Lifebuoy when the mood is not good. Most often this happens in the heat at the border: (Our tablet contains useful applications: and, which I already wrote about, mathematical and logic games, games for studying animals, drawing games, construction sets, interactive books, games on English language, puzzles, cards, search engines. Disadvantages of the tablet: 1. many games are made in compliance with sound safety recommendations, so they are hard to hear when the car is in motion, 2. the tablet may run out of charge while on the go, and then take a long and tedious time to charge (if you have the opportunity to charge it at all) , 3. There is only one tablet, and in our case there are two people who want to play.

5. Cartoons. It's the same story with them as with the tablet. Our cartoons were recorded on a laptop, which quickly ran out of charge, and the audibility was not as good as we would like. Although the animated series “The Land Before Time” saved us on the Romanian border.

6. Small toys: cars (we're on the road), characters, lacing, jewelry for girls, animal figurines, kinders, etc.

7. Pencils, crayons and markers. We only have them thick, they are very comfortable to hold, they do not fall out of your hands. We store them in metal IKEA boxes.

8. And, of course, printable tasks:) I made travel finds sheets, drawing templates, and a word search game that starts with each letter of the alphabet. Total 6 sheets.