Things to do
in the Car and Ferry Line
Music and
Radio
1.Take turns humming a song and letting the others guess
what song it is. Whoever
guesses correctly gets to hum the next one.
2. Put the radio on a talk station. Turn down the volume. Ask the
radio a question and
then turn up the volume. The radio will answer your
question! But usually it will be very
funny. [I played this with my friend once and after
awhile I said to her “I can’t think of
anymore questions.” She was in the middle of
changing to a better talk station and
when she stopped the radio said: “You should go
back to boot camp!”]!
3. Pick a song you like and keep the tune the same, but make up
different words as you
sing it.
4. As soon as a song comes on the radio, the first person to guess
the name of the song,
the singer or another detail about the song, gets a point.
Beforehand, decide how
many points it takes to win. If this gets too easy,
try to think of harder things people
have to guess, like the last word of the song or what color
of hair the singer has.
(An alternative way to play this game is helpful for
families who have trouble agreeing
on a radio station to listen to. Someone begins by turning
to their radio station, and
whoever guesses the name of the song or artist first
gets to change it to their radio
station once the song's over.)
5. Sing the words of one song to the tune of another.
6. Sing a line of a song. The next person has to sing a of a
different song. The catch is that
they must use a word that the other person sung in
their line.
7. Have everybody take turns singing a piece of their favorite
song.
8. Pick someone in the car to begin the game. That person thinks of a
song and starts
singing it, without telling anyone else what the name
of it is. The first person to guess
what the song is, gets a point and gets to sing
the next song. Decide beforehand how
many points wins.
Variation:
Everyone
starts with an equal number of points [you choose how many]. You play
the
same but instead of getting a point when you think of the name of the song,
you
subtract the number of words the person sung, from your score. When
someone
reaches 0 the game ends and the person with the most points left
wins.
Writing and Stories
1. Make a ship’s log of your adventures. Ask each person to describe
the day’s events
creatively as one person writes them down in a notebook.
You could make this into an
adventure or spy story, then every time you get into the
car you can add to it.
2. Somebody starts telling a story and after a couple of
minutes, points to another person
who goes on with the story for awhile and then points to
the next person. You can
make the stories go on forever!
3. Somebody begins a story by saying just one word, everybody then takes
turns adding
the next word as quickly as possible. The game ends
when the story is over, or
somebody takes to long trying to think of the next
word.
4. Make up your own language! You could call brothers
willabickers and cookies
humdoobs!
5.Try saying everything backwards. First practice just saying words, for
example, book
becomes ‘koob’. After awhile,
try doing whole sentences backwards!
“Backwards song a singing try,
sentences at good really get you if!”
6. Here’s a good game to play when things start getting too noisy on
the car:
Instead of talking, pass notes
to each other.
7. Make up a story about the first five things that come
into your head. Tell it to the others
in the car. Take turns doing this. Also,
it’s handy to have some paper around, to write
down the stories that are really good.
8. Make up a code.
9. This game is called Ghost and this is how you play:
One person thinks of a word they want to
try and spell [except they don’t really want to
spell it, but more on that later], they
write the first letter of that word on a piece of
paper. The next person thinks of a
word that starts with that letter[it can be the same
or different word], they write the
second letter after the first. This continues, each
taking turns until a word is
spelled. The person who finishes the word loses the
round and gets a ‘G’. Like in
pig, except first you get G, then H, O, S, and last T. The
first person to spell GHOST loses the
game.
10. Hidden sentences:
[This game must be done with
at least 4 players, or it doesn’t work]. To play, divide
the people playing into two
groups. One person from each team sits aside and
plugs their ears. Each team
makes up a sentence that is weird, like:
Forty
crows were eating clams in the forest.
They write these sentences on
slips of paper and call the other people back into the
group. Each team hands their
paper to the person who sat out in the other team.
They read the sentence
silently and then begin a conversation with the other person
who sat out. The object
of the game is
1:
To figure out what their weird sentence is. You can try to guess what the other
person’s
weird sentence is only 3 times during the conversation, and only
right
after they’ve said it.
2:
To say the weird sentence to the other person without them being able to
guess
that its the sentence you read.
SCORING:
1
point if the other team makes three wrong guesses.
2
points if you correctly guess the sentence.
2
points if you say your sentence and the person doesn’t detect it.
11. This game is called THE SECRET WORD. To play this,
you must have at least 3 players
with good imaginations. One player
will be the ‘detective’, that person must plug
their ears. The rest of the
players talk about and agree on what should be the secret
word. The detective then asks
each of the players a different question which they
must answer in three to four
sentences and use the secret word in it. When all of
the players have
answered the questions, the detective must guess what the secret
word is, in 5 guesses.
When he guesses correctly, the score is written down and a
new detective is
chosen.
SCORING:
5
points if right on first guess
4
if on second
3
on third
2
on fourth
1
on fifth
12. This game can be played with 1 or 100. It’s called WHY?
BECAUSE! To play, four small
slips of paper are given to
each person. Everybody writes down 2 or more questions
beginning with WHY, and then
writes a BECAUSE answer to each question (all on
different slips of paper). Example:
QUESTION:
Why are some clouds gray?
ANSWER:
Because they are filled with rain.
When everyone is finished,
all the WHY slips go into one container, and all the
BECAUSE slips into another.
Each person draws out one WHY slip and one
BECAUSE slip. Then they take
turns reading their question and answer. The result
will be a funny, mixed
matched question and answer maybe sounding something
like this:
“Why
are some clouds gray?. . . Because it is their way of communicating.”
This
is a mix of:
Why
are clouds gray? . . . Because they are filled with rain.
And.
. .
Why
do birds sing? . . . Because it is their way of communicating.
13. The name of this game is Square Words. To play, have
each person draw a box on
their sheet of paper. Divide
it into 25 small squares, but big enough to write one
letter in each. One
person [who is not playing the game] calls
out letters that
must be put in the squares. The players
can put them in any square they
wish. The object of the game is to be able to
make as many words as possible
when the squares are all filled in[words can be
formed vertically, horizontally or
diagonally].
SCORING:
2
letter words are 2 points
3
letter words are 3 points etc. ... etc. ...
14. The final game in this section is CATEGORIES. A
minimum of 4 people are
needed to play. Begin by giving
each person a sheet of paper and a pencil.
On the paper make a box. Make five
lines going down and five going across
[this divides it into 36 squares]. In the
top left hand square write: TOTAL
POINTS. Decide as a group, different
categories (sports, junk foods, things
found in a kitchen etc.) to write in the
five spaces to the right of it and five
letters to write in the spaces below. The
players now have 7 minutes to fill in
all the boxes with words. The words must
fit the category above and begin with
the letter to the left. At the end of 7
minutes everyone stops and scores
themselves.
SCORING:
0
points if there is no word in that box
1
point if there is a word in the box, but someone else has that
word
too.
2
points if you have a word no one else does.
Imagination games
[Have a pen and paper handy, you might want to write down your ideas and what goes on].
1. Pretend your car is an airplane or spaceship, pretend
the driver is the pilot
and pick jobs for everyone
else. Hold conversations as your characters.
2. In this game everybody pretends that they are an inventor.
One person thinks of
a common object like a bed spring
and then everybody thinks up funny uses
for it. For example, a bed
spring could be a catapult for a mouse, a slide for
an ant, or an antler off a deer
from Neptune. When no one can think of any
more uses, pick a new object.
3. Imagine that you are something you see that you pass on the road. Look
at things
from it’s point of
view.
4. Pretend that you are traveling in a vehicle from a long time
ago. Think of
where you are going and why.
5. Pretend that you are in a vehicle from the future.
Draw what you think it looks
like.
6. Look at the clouds, trees and hills outside the car.
See if you can see any
interesting shapes or forms they
take.
7. Make up a sequel to a book or movie.
8. Imagine you are explorers. As you go, draw the roads you travel on. On
the
back of the paper write down
why you are are exploring the area and different
things that happen to you on
the way.
Art and Drawing
1. Design and draw a spaceship, time machine, cool sports car or some
other vehicle.
2. Draw your dream house or just your dream room.
3. Make a map or drawing of a different land.
4. Draw a different kind of people, to live in the made up land.
5. Get 3 or more people and play FOLLOW MY PEN. To play,
give paper and pens
[or pencils] to
everyone. Pick one person to be the leader. That person will
think of something to draw
[something fairly simple] but not tell anyone what
it is. Then they will begin
to draw it slowly. The others, looking only at the
leader’s paper, not
their own, will try to draw the same thing. If the leader’s
pen goes up, so does theirs.
When the drawing is completed, the others can
look down at their paper, the
results of their drawing are usually interesting.
6. Play pictionary!
7. Pick two objects outside the car and try to draw them, combining
them both
into one. Name the
new object.
8. With lunch sized paper bags, you can make puppets,
just draw faces on them
and then do a puppet
show!
9. Draw an optical illusion.
10. Just draw anything!
Other Ideas
1. Look for certain types of cars on the road .
. . each is worth a certain number
of points. (We play this with VW bugs (new and old =
1 pt), PT Cruisers
(2 pts), Limos (6 pts), and Hummers (20 pts).) See
who can get the most points
before reaching your destination!
2.
Play "I'm Going to The Anacortes Ferry Terminal" (aka "I'm
Going to
Grandma's House") One person starts by
saying "I'm going to the Anacortes
Ferry Terminal and I'm taking an
__________." The blank should be
filled in with a noun (person,place or thing)
starting with the letter "A" For
example:
"I'm
going to the Anacortes Ferry Terminal and I'm taking an Air mattress."
Then the next person (we usually go clockwise)
needs to say the same thing
as the person before them, but add on a noun
starting with the next letter of the
alphabet. For example:
"I'm
going to the Anacortes Ferry Terminal and I'm taking an Air mattress
and
a Bumper sticker."
Each player continues to add on a "thing
to bring" until the end of the alphabet
is reached.
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