DS1 is just about to turn 3 and enjoys playing "I spy" It's the best way to keep him occupied at restaurants or waiting rooms. I'm struggling to remember similar games that can occupy little kids without equipment. I'm especially looking for suggestions because we've got a lot of travel coming up. So what kinds of games like this occupy your kids?
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We try to list as many things as we can that are a certain color or begin with a particular letter of the alphabet. What about looking for shapes or numbers or letters on signs, menus, etc?
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Pick a theme and go through the alphabet taking turns. Like, animals. One person says anteater. The next, bear. Then cat, etc.
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Chic-fil-a kids' meals give out dinner games that you play while you eat dinner. There were a few good ones in there:
Pass the Pepper - pass something (like the pepper shaker) around the table, and each person has to tell everyone else the best thing that happened to them that week. You could also do the strangest, funniest, etc.
One person thinks of a fruit/veggie/other food, and you play 20 questions to try to guess the fruit. The questions can only be yes or no answers.
What's that sound - have someone make a sound like a lawn mower, dog, firetruck, etc, and then everyone has to guess the sound. Whoever guesses correctly goes next.
Pick a category like food. One person names a food, and the other person has to think of a food that starts with the last letter of the fruit the person just named. For example...I name Strawberry. The next person has to think of a food that begins with a Y. So yam...next is M.
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@JennyPenny: 3 years old is tough, they're not going to have enough vocabulary for word or alphabet games...at least my son didn't at age 3.
I know you said no equipment, but this is literally the only way we can go anywhere. I always have a deck of cards and a couple markers and paper, and some hotwheel cars.
My son is a tactile learner, the sooner I embraced it, the happier we became.
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We really like the guessing game (I suppose it's like 20 questions?), where someone thinks of something and you have to ask yes/no questions to guess it (is it an animal? is it a person? is it a vehicle? etc). We also will do pretend scenarios, so we would pretend we're in a store, and our son is the shopkeeper and would sell us things; or a waiter and we would order things.
I love doing games like this at restaurants, where you don't need any props or toys! Of course it takes a lot more effort on our part (so sometimes we just take out a notepad and a few colored pencils for coloring), but it's actually really fun to see what he comes up with.
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What's Missing - Line up a few things, have them memorize them, close their eyes, take one away and then they have to remember what is missing.
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Thanks guys, these a great! Some of them are definitely too advanced for DS right now, but we can make some adaptations and grow with them.
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What about spot it jr?
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We play one that I made up for drives where the first person picks something like a red car or a semi without a trailer or a motorcycle and everyone in the car has to look for that thing. The person who sees that item first wins and then gets to pick the next thing. We've also played one when my son had first learned the alphabet and we would all search for a word on a sign that started with A, then B, and down the line until we got to Z. That one took a long time!
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@CarDad: I love playing what's missing with my DD! She loves it. So easy to do with stuff in your purse/diaper bag and items on the table at restaurants.
Last summer we had a super long drive home from the cottage so we sang the "months of the year" and "days of the week" over and over again. It was a lot of fun to see her "catch on" to the order of things and learn them as we went along. She was almost 3 at the time.
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In the car we do:
Who can find a.... (stop sign, truck, flag etc.)
What letter does _____ start with? (any random thing I see)
Math word problems (If I have 5 cookies and I eat 2, how many do I have left?) He likes figuring these out.
Telling silly stories with fill in the blanks. (like an oral mad libs) -
@Shantuck: Ha ha that's what we do too!
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