Saturday, June 22, 2019
Old-school Screen Time
T minus 33 hours until we leave for our roadtrip. (Give or take thirty minutes.) I have, of course, been prepping food for over a week now, because I once again intend to cross the country without needing to stop at a restaurant.
I started gathering children's clothing today, as well, and I got the van all cleaned out in anticipation of stuffing it full of crap once again.
Ah, but what crap will I stuff in it to entertain the children during the 28 hours we will be driving?
That, I'm afraid, was not so carefully considered this time around.
I did buy some new books for Cubby, because he is lucky enough to be able to read in a moving car without getting sick. Charlie is not so lucky.
I found some activity books and sticker books we already had on hand that may work for a short amount of time to keep Jack and Charlie distracted.
I found some board books for Poppy, and I'll throw in some random toys.
But my ace in the hole, my extra-special secret weapon is a twenty-year-old Game Boy.
The boys don't know I have this. I actually don't know why I do still have it. It was given to me by my parents when I went away to college twenty years ago--I think--and in the intervening years it has apparently moved with me to the many places I've lived since. I do not know why, because I definitely have a tendency to chuck anything that I consider extraneous. An electronic game that I haven't played in 15 years definitely qualifies, and yet, there it is in my closet.
When I realized I was facing a roundtrip distance of approximately 2,500 miles with four bored children, I pulled out the ancient Game Boy, put in new batteries, and flipped the power switch.
To my astonishment, it turned on.
The only game I have for it is Tetris, and it's a small, old, black-and-white video game system that would look hopelessly primitive to children accustomed to modern gaming systems.
Luckily, those are not my children. The only video games they have ever played have been on the computer at school. They're not picky. I confidently expect incredulity at their great good fortune when I get desperate and pull out the screen on our drive.
I don't expect it will keep any of them but Cubby entertained for very long, but even an hour would be helpful. We'll see, I guess.
And if that fails, there's always the rhyming game.
Any other suggestions for non-electronic car games? I could use all the help I can get.
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8 comments:
Card Games
I spy
Car Bingo
My brother and I used to count blue cars (for me) and green cars (for him) to see who came out ahead. Of course, this involves a great deal of chanting to keep your numbers in mind, which my father could not stand after a while. Have a good trip! Mary in MN
I'd recommend printing off a map of the united states and have the kids search for license plates from each of the states. Then one of the kiddos can color in the state of the map once they see it and during the trip you can keep coming back to it! :)
Wow! The commenters have some great ideas! I was going to say card games & I spy (already mentioned), but I like "Loving's" idea.
Actually, I think it's pretty neat that you still have a game boy for the boys to play.
Linda
I know you want non-electronic so this isn't a suggestion, but you reminded me of the first electronic game I ever played: football, with red LEDs to represent the players.
As horrible as it was, now that I'm thinking about it I want to find one and make the girls try it.
I used to do this with my nephew and niece. Start a made up story with a sentence or two , as you go round the car the next person adds a line to the story , everybody takes a turn , and then if they like it you can start it again.
When I drove from Colorado to Florida with a 5 year old and a 10 year old I printed some roadside bingo pages and an age appropriate alphabet game list for each and put them on a clipboard. The older one also got a list of all the states and tried to see how many license plates he could find.
We used to give each of our three kids their own cake pan with a lid. Each pan held coloring books, crayons, sticker books, legos, etc. But the biggest hit, weirdly enough, was that each kid had their own box of different sized band-aids. If you're willing to spend the money they have all kinds of cartoon characters available. I swear those kids could spend a full hour covering themselves with band aids. The trash was worth it.
Susan
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