Letters and Numbers - Road trip fun for your little one

A wonderful and educational way to pass some time during a road trip (be it to the grocery store or a far away state) is to use your surroundings as a fun teaching tool. Just look around at all the letters, numbers, and symbols on the roadways! There are traffic lights, stop signs, bright green highway exit signs, orange construction notifications (I dare you to take a trip without encountering some of these!), black and white speed limit markers, and a variety of longhaul trucks sporting big, colorful words and images.

When you get back home your kids can have fun building their own highway sign using this clever little Java applet.

All of this sets up nicely for some unplugged mobile family gaming, old school style. I-Spy with colors, letters, and numbers is a slam dunk with your little learners.
Another game to pass the time inside or outside the car is the "I am going on vacation and I am bringing..." alphabet game. We played this each night in Maine by the campfire with the older kids and modified the text to say "I am going to a lakehouse in Maine..." and "I am riding on a Moose..."
This is a simple one to play, and here are the basic tenants for those unfamilar:

Each person must announce an item (food, animal, or anything really) that they will bring with them. The first person uses the letter A, the next B, and so on. The rub is that each player must run through the entire list on every turn. This challenges kids' (and adults'!) vocabulary and memory - when you get to the second half of the alphabet it gets rather interesting trying to recall what item starting with D is coming along on holiday. This is great fun.

Another variation of this game is to tie each letter item together. For example, if the person who has B says "bird", the next in line must come up with a C-word that is related to a bird. If the next player opts for "cardinal" (a good one!), then the D-word would have to relate to cardinal, etc... This can be made harder, easier or themed depending on what you start with. A for appendix, as an example, may cause the entire game to be played with body part words or words relating to books/literature.

Jeff
Out With The Kids
http://www.outwiththekids.com