“If a child is to keep his innate sense of wonder alive, he needs the company of at least one adult to share it with, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” GAMES TO PLAY IN THE CAR WITH CHILDREN

Rachel L. Carson

We can put many things in the trunk of the car for the departure of a journey, but inventing games to be able to interact with your child and make the journey less boring, is only up to our skills and our inventiveness! Discovering the tastes of the child, inventing stories, discovering what’s outside the window while traveling are just some of the games we can play together. Do we find any?

If I were….

Let’s start with a simple game that allows us to know the tastes of our child. Let’s ask him some simple questions like “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” or “If you were a color, would you be …?” or even “If I were a flower …”. In this way the child will feel free to express his tastes, in complete tranquility, and at the same time you will discover something more than what he is passionate about at that moment or the one in which it is most reflected.

Let’s see what isn’t there!

A beautiful creative game is to find hidden images behind common shapes. It is a seemingly simple pastime, but it turns out to be very stimulating, an invaluable source of nourishment for the creative mind. We raise our eyes to the sky and look at the clouds, fantasizing about their shapes and their movements; we could come face to face with a dragon, see a little fish jumping into a sea wave, be enchanted by discovering a large castle, admire a boat whose sail is blown up by the wind … Clouds are like drawings depicting real things or imaginary; let’s free our imagination!

Guess the animal!

Think of an animal and then describe the color of its fur, the number of legs, what habitat it lives in, what it eats, whether it is a small, large, long or tall animal … The child will have to guess which animal you are thinking about and if he guesses , it’s up to him to think of an animal, describing it in detail for you to guess. But animals are not the only subjects of entertainment; In fact, this game is highly adaptable to any other topic such as cartoon characters, objects, foods (such as fruit and vegetables), crafts, etc.

Travel and count!

Let’s count the things we see outside the window! You can ask him to count the red trucks, the campers, the cars with the trailer, the motorbikes, the cars like yours and everything that you see from the window. Then as the child grows the difficulty increases: he has to say the type of vehicle (taxi, pickup truck, SUV, etc.), find the cars of the most unusual colors, etc. Of course this game can be used not only for vehicles: it can be applied to people, perhaps by asking them to count the people stopped at a bus stop or sitting inside a car, to the number of cows that are in the meadow, to the number of bell towers. that can be seen looking at a city in the distance, etc.

The associations

We start by saying any word, for example ” sea “. The child will have to answer “when I feel the sea , I think about games on the sand “; the adult will have to continue “when I hear games on the sand , I think of a castle “; the child will say “when I hear the word castle , I think of a dragon“And so on … It may happen that the child associates something” strange “, perhaps putting a dinosaur near the dragon of the castle; in that case maybe let’s ask him why he came to make that kind of association (maybe he remembered a cartoon seen on TV or he thought of simply associating another type of big and scary animal) but then let’s indulge his imagination and continue the our game, after all the beauty of these games is to free the imagination!

Let’s make up a story

The characters of a story are chosen together; two little animals or a fairy and a princess or three lively siblings … Then the parent begins to tell the story, but often blocking the story to ask the child for suggestions: he can ask him to decide the place where the story is to take place or to bring in a new character. Who knows where our inventiveness combined with that of our child will lead us; the story is guaranteed to be at least incredible

And obviously the beauty of all these games is the reversal of adult-child roles and the creativity of inventing similar games, changing the object of the game.

So what are you waiting for? By playing with your child, no journey will be longer and boring!