activities for car rides

It seems I spend quite a bit of time in the car with my kids...traveling to and from school, going on short trips or just running errands. Car rides are great times to practice skills and talk. Here are a few ideas I've tried with my kids (ages 2, 5, and 7) as we drive in the car:

*practice phone number and address as well as child and parent's full names

*listen to books on tape or CD (you can check these out for free from the public library or buy them for good prices on the Scholastic book orders)

*talk about our day

*play rhyming games: one of us will give a word and everyone else takes turns saying a word that rhymes until we can't think of anymore (example: cat, hat, sat, fat, bat, ....)

*make up analogies. Analogies are a way to compare things.... the form is like this:
hot is to cold as up is to __________ (answer: down) I think up analogies and the kids try to guess what comes next. Some more examples: frogs are to green as pigs are to (pink), ice cream is to sweet as pretzels are to (salty), birds are to chirp as dogs are to (bark)

*play I Spy... one person says, "I spy with my little eye, something that is _______ (green or red or square or round)" Then everyone tries to guess what that person sees.

*the alphabet game: As you drive, look for each letter of the alphabet, in order. The letters can be on cars or other vehicles, buildings, signs, etc.

*Count objects: We'll count red cars or how many houses have flags flying or people wearing green.

*Practice skip counting... by two's, fives, tens, threes, fours. Skip counting gets kids ready for multiplication. Excellent practice.

*Look for things that are a certain shape (look for circles...hexagons, trapezoids) or solid (cylinder, cube, pyramid, cone).

*I have my older child (age 7) read to my younger ones sometimes as we drive.

*Sing fun children's songs. Raffi has lots of great CD's and here ar many other great singers. Again these can be checked out from the library for free. Many of the songs are educational, teaching shapes, colors, numbers, etc. Since we want our children to be bilingual (English and Spanish), I often check out CD's with Spanish music.

**One thing I haven't tried but that might be fun is to have one person start a story then after a few sentences have another family member continue the story, and then another and another, seeing how the story changes as each person adds to it.