Let’s say in the middle of a long trip your spouse is snoozing in the passenger seat and the baby is napping in his car seat, but his squirmy sibling needs something to do. The ABC game just might do the trick. In fact, it might work so well, you’ll get to listen to that book on tape after all.
The ABC game
This game can be played several ways, depending on what seems right for your child.
One Player:
1. This is the simplest way: Ask your child to write down all the ABCs on a piece of paper. Then, tell her to find each letter out the window of the car on signs, license plates and wherever else she can find them. As she finds the letters, have her cross them off her list until she’s got the whole alphabet. It’s not as hard as it sounds because if she reads a whole word, she can cross all those letters off her list. And “exit” takes care of that usually difficult X.
2. Have your child find the ABCs in order. This adds a little tension because if she finds one of the rarer letters like “K” she can’t use it until she finds those letters leading up to it.
3. Have your child find the ABCs in order, but tell her she needs to come up with a word starting with that letter before she can start looking for the next letter.
Two or More Players:
1. Have a race to see who can find all the letters of the alphabet first. You can play this with the letters in order or out of order.
2. Play as above, but once a letter is taken, no one else can use it. Don’t play this way if anyone in the car is sleeping because it’s not going to be a quiet game.
3. For a non-competitive game, have the kids find each letter of the alphabet in order, taking turns.