#1146 - Road Trip Sanity Savers

Published Dec 17, 2024, 6:00 PM

"Are we there yet?"

Long family road trips can definitely be painful, BUT they can also be a great opportunity for some quality family time! We share a list of some helpful road trip games to keep everyone entertained.

  • I-spy
  • Spotto
  • I went to the shops and I bought
  • The alphabet game
  • Car cricket
  • Old MacDonald Had A Farm
  • The Goanna Gang
  • Bingo
  • This Is The Song That Never Ends
  • Peel The Avocado
  • The Fart Game
  • Stay quiet or else!

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It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just wants answers.

Now, I'm justin your highly Happy Families dot com. Dou is where you find out more about who we are and what we do. Family road trips for the holidays. We know that there's a good chance there's a whole bunch of people who are going to be getting in the car and driving more than a couple of hours to spend time with relatives this summer. I have been through the pain that long car trips require of families many times. Yet did you remember a few years ago we got the kids in the car, we were driving from Woollongdong to Coff's Harbor, and I said, no screens. We're going to have a family weekend. We're going to spend good quality time together, that we're not going to look at screens. And that eight and a half hours in the car was just torture.

I believe. By the next time we went and did that same trip, we had actually installed screens behind each of the that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, we had, because that was we had the best trip ever.

Back in the day when you had to put DVD players in the car because you couldn't just stream on your phone. Yeah we did. We had a good trip the second time because but but wouldn't it be great if you could actually have some good quality family time while you're driving with your kids. And we're not going to go militant about screens or not screens. We're just going to share a bunch of ideas with you about how you can have high quality road trip time and enjoy being with your family. We're dividing it up into two sections. I can't wait to get section two because this is where we're going to talk about music. But in the first section, we've just got a whole lot of I guess talking kind of games.

Well, we put it out there on our Facebook page and asked everybody to kind of give us some ideas of what they do to keep things moving along in the car, and we had some really really great.

So I see what you did there. I know I talked over you, sorry, but we said keep things moving along in the car. That was really clever. We didn't even plan that. Well done. We've got a lot to get through. We're probably going to have to put these all in the show notes, and we might even do a blog about it, an article on the website, because you're not going to hang onto all of these ideas. This is the kind of episode that you want a bookmark and come back to every time you've got a road trip planned. Because we have got so many brilliant ideas. Let's do all the talkie kind of games and conversations.

First two things that I had done on a recent car trip car bingo, where we just picked a whole heap of things that we might see on the road, and the kids had to kind of try and find, you know, five in a row of those.

So you've got to find like a garbage truck or an aeroplane flying overhead, a red letterbox, or a kangaroo or an emu or something like that. Yeah, yeah, cool.

And then the second one was those conversation starters, little cards that you can have that just give you a whole heap of just one sentence, one question, and you can ask each other those questions, which is the fun.

Yeah, because we get to explore stories of our lives with our children and they love that. So what did our Facebook followers have to say? We've got If you're not on our Facebook page, by the way jump on become part of the community. It's a great group of people. It's a big group, but it's a great group of people.

What do they have to say, Well, the number one number. There was two games that were just the favorites, were I Spy or everybody Knows I Spy. But there was a couple of variations to that. There might have been I Spy yellow or for younger.

Kids, right okay, and then spot Oh yeah, the two most A're going to sound like, I'm a real grump in the car both of those games. You know, I don't like Spotto because one of our kids punches us every time we see a yellow car. Spot O. It's like, we're not a hissing family. Stop hitting me. I don't like being punched by my thirteen year old.

No.

Well, what used to happen more than anything was no I got that spot.

I saw it. The fights, the fights over who saw the yellow car? Like, So be warned that if you're doing competitive stuff, it can turn ugly. So if people don't know how to play Spotto. By the way, it's pretty much every time a yellow car goes past, the first person to say spot O.

Well, there's lots of variations. Some people had concrete trucks, some people had mini Coopers. It's really up to you, whatever you want.

Yeah, and our kids have actually added a variation as well. I don't know if you know about this one, but every time a green car goes past, you know what they say, I'm so sorry to any green car drivers.

We invented all the kids another family. Every time a Mustang came past, it was motto.

That's great. I like that. Okay, let's do a few others really quickly. What else.

I went to the shops and I brought.

Oh gosh, no Ah, that is the most brain numbing. It's actually really good for your memory. I get it, but I just it's like my grandmother went to the shops and she bought I went on holidays and I brought you.

To be downer.

Well, I'm looking forward to the singing games. I just like singing. I'm not very well.

A couple of others. The Alphabet game. We actually love playing this game. As the kids have gotten older. It's really good for emerging readers to recognize their letters. And so the object is you literally are just collecting letters, whether it be from plates or from billboards.

Streets on you, and it's got to be alphabeticalized, so you're looking for an A. So we'll be like A in Warhope. I don't know why I said Warhape a in Brisbane. So you've just got to find the letter in a word or on a number plate.

You know.

I saw a V on that car going plass and you've got to do it in order, and it's kind of a race. We've decided that if I'm driving, I can't play that game because I get a bit competitive and stop watching the road. It's a very dangerous game to play if you're driving.

And a game that I've never played before, but you used to play it as a kid.

Car cricket cricket. So my dad was a furniture removalist. Mum and dad ran a furniture moving company when I was a kid, and I used to sit in the truck driving from the New South Wales Central Coast up to the Gold Coast or Brisbane. Every holiday. Dad and I would go and do furniture removals and I spent hours playing car cricket And basically a car is worth one run, A car with the trailer is worth four. A car with a caravan is worth six, and if you see any motorcycles or any trucks buses, you're out. Of course, there's ten wickets, so you've got to lose ten wickets, get as many runs as you can. Then the other person's in for their innings.

You know, my head is hurting. Now, how am I supposed to remember?

It's not hard? One, four, six, and then you're out with the other store. What's before a car with the trailer?

Of course the car no the answer.

Yeah, But it's fun to play at night because there's lots of trucks and you get out really fast, and sometimes you only get two or three runs and all these trucks.

Just so the last time I'm going to share with you came in from one of our followers and she calls it truck truck car busy, and the object is to just guess what the next four cars will be. Okay, well the next four vehicles, and so in this case, she's guessing that the next four vehicles are going to be a truck, truck, car and a bus.

So if I'm on the freeway, I'm going to say car, car, car, cars, because there's going to be a whole bunch of cars, and I'm probably going to get that right. Is that the idea?

Yeah? And the idea is you want to do it before there's any cars in front of yours, there is any vehicle. So I would suggest that this is on a long car trip where you're kind of dealing with long highway stretches where you're not you know, I'm busy freeways. I don't think it would work as well.

Up next, we're going to play or talk about the funnest games ever, the singing games.

Today we are talking about how we deal with that question. Are we there yet?

So we've talked about all the talkie games. Now it's signed for the singing games. Some families have really got the whole singing thing down pat like the kids in Step Brother. The Great Game was really nailed at this time. Here we go A one two, A one two, three four.

She's got smile that it seems to me reminds me of childhood memories whereverything was as fresh as a ride.

Boy, how good are you? You're the oldest I'm counting on you.

Come on, she's got us.

Where guy, oh good guy. I can't take it because this is really hard to listen to because last time we tried singing in the car it sounded more like this.

The place.

Oh my goodness, we're not even in the in the same galaxy of talent as the anyway, So what are the singing games? Because sing alongs are fun, But you've actually got some games that have come through as suggestions.

Well old McDonald for our younger kids, McDonald farm. Especially when you're driving the countryside, you can find animals as you go and add them to the equation. The the acknowledgment in one of the messages was just that they might have ended up with a few dinosaurs in there in their farm.

Well what why not that? That just reminds me actually of you've probably heard of Well maybe you haven't heard of it, but there's a group called the Go and a Gang and they're on Spotify and they've done a whole lot of kids stuff and they just make song time in the car with the little kids loads of fun because you've got stuff like this, and then there's build him up, Build them up, Build them I remember that from play school our kids. It's a lovely yeah there eventually anyway, So there's all that sort of stuff what what what old McDonald?

Yeah, okay, next bingo?

What's bingo? I thought we were playing bingo as a talking game.

This is a song. Okay, there was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name. O b I ng o, b I ng o, b i n g o and Bingo was his name.

But that's just a song. What's the point of that.

Well, the idea is the next time we sing it, we're going to take away the B and so we have to clap and then do I n g o, and then we're going to clap again for the third verse and we're going to do b ng o.

Oh okay, all right, so that's there's some coordination. That's great for kids, for little kids, what about for bigger kids?

This is the song that never ends.

Oh yeah, this is the song that never ends. I don't know the tune problem.

Yes, it goes on and on. My friends, some people started singing and not knowing what it was. Why are you laughing at me?

You've got a great voice. And then the continued singing it forever, just because this is the song that never ends, and it starts all over again. It's torture. We're supposed to be trying to help people have a nice card t Well, my absolute.

Favorite over the last few years is Peel the Avocado.

I don't have the void just came out and I was like, what are you doing? And the YouTube clip is you have to watch it if you.

Definitely look it up, it's worth a worth a good laugh. But the highlight of all of the comments that came through this would be my number one pick. Well, it's actually ours because we had lots.

We don't talk about this one.

Yep.

Somebody said they play the fart game.

Which is really a word replacement game. What happens is you find any song that has the word heart in the title or in the lyrics and you change it too fart. So we did a little bit.

I think they must have a few boys in there.

We did a little bit of googling, and I thought, well, this this would be fun to sing because if we're changing heart to farts and then if you if you don't want selene because I don't know, it doesn't work, and yeah, it's a bit dreary, and maybe we want something a little bit older, something from the eighties. There's Elton John and Kiki d don't go breaking.

A what.

I gave you by fart. This is so rude. I gave you my fat don't go breaking the fus. I can't believe what have we become? What has this podcast become?

I'm blaming Rebecca for this one.

My favorite one of all of them, just while we're being absolutely ridiculous was rock Set listen to the Fast. All right, that's enough. I can't take it anymore. We have six daughters. This is not the example that we want to be setting for them. You want to have fun on a car trip, this is the way to do it, right.

Yeah, I think so. The last one I'm going to add it in. Okay, okay, Adam said stay quiet or else.

That's a good game.

Let's just quiet game.

See who can stay the quietness for the longest.

Yeah.

So after we've had lots and lots of fun, that might be one to just finish things off.

Just look out the window, kids, just look out the window and soak it in if you're going on a car trip. If I hope that that's been helpful. I don't know how many of them we're really gonna try. I actually think there's some fun ideas there though. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media. Hey, just before we go, we wanted to mention if you've been thinking about what you can get for Christmas for somebody that you love. Can we recommend happy families dot com dot a u as a place to go and have a look. Light your family up with goodness and happiness. Happy families dot com dot a u

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