6 exciting travel games to keep your kids busy

Whether it’s for a long road trip or between flights, kids can get fidgety if they're bored. The solution? Fun travel games that will keep everyone calm and entertained. Here are six games to keep the little ones occupied.

Without taking up too much space in a suitcase or having too many game pieces to lose, travel games should be small enough to play on a plane’s fold-down tray or in the back seat of the car. Here are six fun ideas to help your kids pass the time while en route.

A box of cards containing riddles or identity mysteries is great for older kids. It tests their knowledge of science, history, language, math and logic. Some of them even encourage their taste for mystery, with challenging scenarios to which the children will need to find a solution.

• Guessing games such as these are the perfect opportunity to awaken the Sherlock Holmes in your child! Of course, you could always invent your own guessing games.

When travelling, camping or stuck indoors on a rainy day, you'll have plenty of time to just be still and observe. Why not have fun with your children by identifying birds, insects and trees?

• There are game guides to help and challenge the whole family, sometimes with birdsong sounds or other sound effects.

And why not take advantage of a car trip to learn the rules of the road?

• See who can identify the most of a certain make of car.
• Who can find the most licence plates containing a particular number or letter?
• And who knows what the different colours of road signs mean?

Travel games should definitely not be complicated. Choose a word and have your young team find all the words belonging to the same family of sounds or spelling patterns.

• You could also pick a letter of the alphabet and let the kids count the objects on the road whose name starts with that letter.

Issue a challenge to make up a sentence with three words that begin with the same letter or have the same number of syllables.

• The imagination has no limits and it’s amazing what you can do with language.

Among the classic travel games, there are the always timeless and multi-age card and dice games.

• They may be slightly more difficult to play while you’re moving, but dice and cards are small enough to slip into a pocket and enjoy in an airport departures lounge or in your hotel room.

How about tapping into something kids love: music!

• Name the first thing you see, such as a car, tree, yellow shirt or jogger. Then, try to find a song that relates to it in theme or that contains the word.

It’s a great challenge and it’ll wake up the troops.

Another proven classic is memory games. Are you familiar with the game that starts with “I'm going on a trip and in my suitcase I put…”?

• When it’s your turn, you must recall all the items already in the suitcase and add one more. The next person names all the items and then adds another, and so on.
• Players who make a mistake in the order or who leave out any items are eliminated.