Scavenger Hunt.

We have (and have had) a couple of road trips planned for this summer and I thought it might be fun to have a bingo/scavenger hunt ready for Alec when we go. He is really into "treasure hunting" these days so I thought the road trip combo might keep his interest on a long boring ride. Since he can't read yet I created this 8 1/2 x 11 grid of things that he might see on our way.
He is always pointing out Mustangs, Corvettes, and other car favorites so they are on here, MD state road signs, McD's, Wawa, Ritas, etc. We printed this out, gave him a crayon to check things off and he had a blast, really we all did.

We do a lot of traveling, before this summer almost all by plane, but the games translate from one to the other pretty easily. He (like his mama) gets car sick easily so books, coloring, and any kind of in-car concentration usually causes some pretty serious nausea. That being said, here are some of our current travel favorites...

1. Books on Tape. He is really into Magic Treehouse right now and they are always on in the car. We keep about 5-10 books on each of our iPods.

2. Pointing out cars. Finding Mustangs and Corvettes are the two most coveted sights on the road. We even got to see a Ferarri the other day.

3. Telling stories. And, he is just now at the age and interest for story-go-rounds

4. Floor Fishing. This is just a dowel with a string and magnet attached and a bucket of magnetized letters and numbers on the floor. With each letter that is caught, we name some words that begin the same.

5. Bigger/Smaller, fatter/thinner etc. Kind of like iSpy but someone will name something and then go around finding the opposite.

Traveling is so fun and honestly we would do it non-stop if we could. Long car rides are a great opportunity to play games listen to books and to have deep conversations about how we would spend our time if money (and medical insurance) were no object.