Children on long bus journeys can easily get bored and restless. So to stop all the ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ chants, why not use your road trip as an opportunity for your class to do a bit of learning and have a bit of fun at the same time? Play of few of these different bus games with your class and make the time pass quickly.
Photo by: Ty Hatch
Road Sign ABC’s
In this game all children must find the all the letters of the alphabet on road and street signs. The rules are that the letters must be found in alphabetical order and only one letter can be used per sign (i.e. if ‘A’ and ‘B’ both appear on the same sign only the ‘A’ will count). The first person to find all 26 letters wins.
Bus Bingo
This game takes a bit of pre-planning; the teacher makes a unique bingo card for every passenger on the bus, featuring pictures of objects and animals that can be spotted on the journey. The first student to spot all of the different objects on their card shouts, ‘bus bingo’ and wins the game.
The Name Game
One player starts by naming a place, either a country or town, then the person next to them picks a different location that starts with the last letter of the previous turn. For example, player one starts off with ‘London’ then the next player may say ‘Nottingham.’ No repeats of place names are allowed. There are no winners in the game, but it is quite clever how players can often remember which places have already been called out, even if you’ve been playing the game for hours.
20 Questions
This classic game of guesswork can develop children’s skills in critical thinking. The first player starts by thinking of a person, place, animal or object. The class then have to ask the person up to 20 questions in order to guess what he/she chose. The questions can only have a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer and the person who guesses correctly is the next person to choose and be asked 20 questions.
Making sentences
This game can help children practice their syntax, by making them build sentences using words from signs and objects they see from the bus window. Each player looks for a noun, a verb, a prepositional phrase, an adjective etc… and puts them together to create a sentence. There are no winners in this game, but you can always reward the children for coming up with very creative sentences.
Chinese Whispers
This popular playground game can also work on school road trips. The teacher starts by whispering to the first person, a fact about the place you’re visiting. The next person then whispers it to the next person and so on, going all the way around the bus. The last person then says the sentence aloud for everyone to hear. It is often quite funny how the information changes dramatically as it’s passed from person to person.
Are there any other bus games that are a favourite with your class? Share in the comments below