Are We There Yet?

If children are school age, one good game to play is called "ghost".

It is a spelling game that requires mental exercise. One person starts a word, the next person adds a letter, and it continues around the circle of those who are playing. Each player tries to keep the word from ending on him/her. If it does, that player gets a letter, "g". The next time a player has a word end on him/her, that player gets an "h", the next time an "o", until the word "ghost" is spelled. When a person has spelled the word "ghost" completely, he drops out of the game. Three letter words do not count and proper names cannot be used. If a player cannot think of a word, he may bluff by going ahead and calling a letter. The next person in line may challenge. If he did not have a word, the player must take a letter from the word "ghost". If he did have a word, the challenger must take a letter. The game continues until all have spelled "ghost" but one person. That person is the winner.

Younger children may find signs that have an "a", "b", "c", etc. going through the alphabet. They say, "I see an 'a'!" or "I see a 'b'!" They try to see who can find the letter first. .An added learning occurs when the parent says something like, "Yes, McDonald's starts with "m"." By doing this, children are learning the sounds of the letters. That helps them with their reading and spelling.

Another good game is "I'm thinking of a person". This may be used within categories such as Bible characters. One person says, "I'm thinking of a person in the Old Testament". The others in the car try to guess who it is by asking questions that may be answered with "yes" or "no" only. Such questions as "Is it a man?"or "Is it a young person?" may be asked. The questioning continues until the person is guessed. The person who guesses correctly is "it" to think of a Bible character for the next round of questioning. This game teaches deductive reasoning as well as helping in the development of recall ability. It is also a good review of Bible characters. It could be adapted to other categories such as U.S. presidents, states, state capitals, birds, flowers, famous people, or even relatives.

Another good activity is story-telling. One person starts the story by

giving the first sentence. The next person adds another sentence, etc. This makes for a lot of good laughs as the stories tend to get sillier and sillier.

Our daughter bought a play computer for our grandchildren to use while traveling. It had math and spelling games on it. They loved it and would pick it up as soon as they got in the car. There are many handheld games available now that are worth their money for the learning obtained. I would suggest, however, that children not be allowed to do one thing all the time. Traveling is a good time for family members to communicate with each other. One person should not be allowed to isolate him/herself from the others in the family.

The use of these ideas and others that family members can undoubtedly create, will make the trip much more pleasant and will eliminate most of the "Are we there yet?" questions.