While the entire family looks forward to celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday and eating delicious food, there is one thing that most people do not look forward to: the long car drive to and from a relative’s home! Boredom is really almost a guarantee.  However, with a few fun car game suggestions, you and your family can enjoy the hours of driving together.

Alphabet Race. The goal of this game is to find each letter of the alphabet, in alphabetical order, on the road signs you see throughout your journey. This game may seem easy, but just wait till you get to letters such as “Q” or “X”! See how fast you can accomplish this feat.

Hug Bug. You might have played this game a little differently when you were growing up, but we are making it much less…painful.  If you see a Volkswagen Beetle or “Bug” you get to give one other person in the car a hug or blow them a kiss!

The Frankie Game. In this game, the word “Frankie”, as in our lovable mascot, is substituted for a verb. To play, one person picks a secret verb like “swim”. Then everyone else asks questions using “Frankie” in place of the verb. “Can you Frankie in the ocean?” “Can you Frankie in the house?” The person who correctly guesses the secret verb gets to choose the next one.

Your Ideal Car. This game requires your family to use their imaginations! Pick a car on the road -even yours- and have each person say one thing that they would want to add onto the car to make it into the car of their dreams. For example, you could say, “I would add on a frozen yogurt machine to the car, so I could have frozen yogurt whenever I wanted!” Keep going until your family thinks they have created their ideal car!

The Teacher’s Dog. We at JumpStart love learning, so this game is perfect if you want to build up your child’s vocabulary on the road! In this game you will go through the alphabet using words to describe the teacher’s dog, the first letter of the descriptive word corresponding to the letter of the alphabet you are on. For example you could say, “The teacher’s dog is an Angry dog.” Then the next person would say, “The teacher’s dog is a Boring dog.” See if your family can find adjectives to describe the teacher’s dog from A-Z!

Question Game. In this game, you are only allowed to speak in questions to everyone in the car. For example one person could ask, “When are we going to get there?”  The next person would ask, “Do you have a watch?” The next person would ask, “Did you take it?” If you do not answer in a question, you are out. The winner of the game is the person who can carry on the conversation in questions the longest!

What are your favorite car games?

Share with some families that are in for a loooong drive.

Eyeball Bounce

You will need:

• 6+ Ping pong balls
• Black, green, blue, brown, and red markers
• 12 disposable cups

The Blue Team is going to be shooting with a piece of art.

Instructions:

1. Before the party begins, make eye balls with colorful irises out of the ping pong balls, one for each participant.
2. Split the kids up into teams of 2 or 3 and give them the same-colored eye, so they know they are on the same team.
3. On a hard surface (preferably a wood floor), line up four cups.
4. On the first cup write 10; write 20 on the second. Write 50 on the third cup and 100 on the one farthest away. Make separate stations for each team.
5. Have the kids and their team line up about 10 feet from the cups.
6. Have them take turns bouncing the eyes, in hopes that it lands in a cup.
7. For every shot made, add the score and determine what eye color is the winner!

Mummy Wrap

You will need:

• 3 rolls of toilet paper per team

Instructions:

1. Have pairs wrap each other in toilet paper until one teammate is covered and both rolls are used up.
2. Race to the finish!
3. OR- To make it more difficult, place the toilet paper far away from the mummy wrappers, now in teams of 3 or 4.
4. When the first mummy is wrapped, have them hop to retrieve the second roll and bring it to the third person, who has to wrap the next person.
5. After he or she is wrapped, they have to hop to retrieve the next roll of toilet paper, trying to not break their own wrapping.

Tell Others about these Neat Party Ideas

Grab your Pirate hat, put that eye patch back on, then  jump into your next pirate adventure and solve this mysterious word search! Good luck and may the wisdom of the 7 seas be with you!

Print yer own

Who says dinosaurs can't be pirates?!

Here is what you will need:

• 3 sheets of newspaper
• Black Tempera paint
• White sheet of paper
• Scissors
• Glue

1. Take the 3 sheets of newspaper and lay it in front of you horizontally with the opening towards you and the crease away from you.
2. Make a triangle fold towards the center of the newspaper with both corners. You do not want the two folds to meet in the middle. Keep them about an inch and a half away from each other.


Making the folds to the center

3. From the bottom, take the first 3 layers of the newspaper and fold the layers up.


Folding first 3 layers at bottom upwards on each side

4. Do the same for the other side.
5. Use the Tempera paint to paint the triangular part of the hat black.
6. On the white piece of paper draw a skull and cross bones. Draw a light bulb shaped figure for the skull. Be sure to include eyes and teeth. Draw your two bones.


Drawing skull and bones. Get creative!

7. Cut out the shapes on the white paper.
8. Glue them onto the hat.
9. Now measure the hat on your child’s head and pinch the extra newspaper.
10. Lastly, staple the two sides to make sure the hat doesn’t slip off and tada you have a completed pirate hat!

Who said dinosaurs couldn't be pirates.....

Now your little sea dog is ready for Talk Like a Pirate Day! If you want to turn this day into a family activity, click here to learn how to create a pirate scavenger hunt!

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Here’s how you do it!

First, answer your favorite 25 questions from the list below with your family.  Using a stack of flashcards, write the question on one side, and the answer on the other.  For example: One side of the card will say “ What is Frankie’s favorite food?” and the other side will say “ Cheese pizza”.   This is your chance to be creative, so feel free to add any other questions you think your family would enjoy answering.  The idea is that it is a trivia game centered around your family, so they don’t necessarily need to be challenging questions, just fun ones.  Print out your pint-sized game board and get ready to play!

The Rules of the game:

1. Start out with one die.  Each person takes turns rolling the die and the person with the highest roll starts the game off and the order follows numerically.
2. Each person can choose a different type of coin to be their marker on the game board
3. The first player rolls the die to see how many spaces they can potentially move and picks an index card from the top of the stack ( without looking at the answer).  They must read the question aloud so everyone can hear.  They have at most 2 minutes to answer the question.  Once they select the answer, another player flips the card over and verifies if it is correct or not.  If the answer is right, the player moves the amount of spaces they rolled.  If they are incorrect, they stay where they are.
4. The game proceeds in this way until someone reaches the end.
5. You will notice that there are character faces on the board.  If you land on one and get the answer correct, you get to double the amount of spaces you move.
6. If you land on a mud puddle, you are stuck there until you answer two consecutive questions correctly.

Questions for the All About Me!  Board Game

*Make sure each question is specific to a certain person – ie, Frankie’s favorite color or Mom’s favorite book.  This way, the answers are not debatable during the game*

1. What is NAME’s favorite color?
2. What is mom’s favorite color?
3. What is dad’s favorite color?
4. How many people are in your immediate family?
5. What is your telephone number?
6. What is mom’s cell phone number?
7. What is dad’s cell phone number?
8. What is your address?
9. What number do you call in case of an emergency?
10. What school do you go to?
11. What is NAME’s favorite thing to eat?
12. What is mom’s favorite thing to eat?
13. What is dad’s favorite thing to eat?
14. What is your brother/ sister’s favorite thing to eat?
15. What is NAME’s middle name?
16. What is your mom/dad/ brother/ sister’s middle name?
17. What is dad’s job?
18. What is mom’s job?
19. When is NAME’s birthday?
20. What state do you live in?
21. How old is your pet?
22. How long have you had your pet?
23. What do you do in an earthquake?
24. What do you do if the fire alarm goes off?
25. Who is NAME’s teacher?
26. What grade is NAME in?
27. What grade is your brother/ sister in?
28. How old is your brother/sister?
29. What is NAME’s favorite book?
30. What is mom/dad/brother/sister’s favorite book?

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How To Play:

Have your children and their friends sit around a table so everyone can see and hear each other. Pick one child to go first and have them pick out an animal cracker from the box. Make sure no one else sees what they pick! Then, have the child take a look at what animal they have and then quickly put it in their mouth and eat it. Once the child eats the animal cracker they have magically transformed into that animal! Have them act just like the animal, making all the necessary sound effects and movements. Everyone else at the table must guess what animal the child has become. Whoever guesses correctly first is the next cracker eater. The child who guesses correctly most often during the game is the animal cracker charades champion!

You can make this yummy game a little bit more educational by telling fun facts about each animal after it is correctly guessed. For example:

• Lions only eat every three to four days.
• Camels have two layers of thick eyelashes to protect them from the dust.
• Rhinos roll in the mud so they do not get sunburned.
• Giraffes can survive up to two weeks without water.
• Elephant trucks continue to grow throughout their entire lifetime.

What is your favorite fun animal fact?

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