Five equipment-free travel games which help ease culture shock by creating a mental cocoon (transport edition)
Managing culture shock in children is a delicate business. I’ve already told you we like to start trips with long periods of overland travel (in order to introduce the kids gently to their new surroundings using the safe structure of games, not to make other experiences seem pleasant by comparison) but even so, it can be overwhelming.
When enough’s enough, we use a whole different set of games to create a “mental cocoon” until they’re ready to engage again. These games do the opposite of what the last set did – instead of drawing kids attention to their new surroundings, they help take their minds back home.
Today, and not just because I can’t seem to upload our Thai holiday photos properly, I want to tell you our top five equipment-free, culture-shock-proofing, cocoon-making games for use on transport.
1. Song Games
Beginner
You could try a simple singalong, using a familiar tune, but for extra pizazz (read: silliness) try changing the first letter of each word to a particular consonant.
Example:
“Who wants to sing Beels Bon Ba Bus Bo Bound Band Bound?”
(Edit:) Since posting this, the kids have made up a word-substitution version as well. I’m a little unclear on the rules, but the lyrics come out along the lines of, “The pillow on the pillow goes pillow pillow pillow.” And so on. Apparently hilarious.
Intermediate
Hum or whistle a familiar tune. First person to guess wins.
Example:
“Mm mm mm mm mmm, mmm mmm mmmmm mm mm mm…”
“Octonauts theme song!” (You got it, right?)
Advanced
Take turns humming and whistling progressively more obscure pieces.
Example:
“………………….”
“Four minutes thirty-three.”
(Edit:) Sparrow plays a version which we are more or less going to book a trip just so we can play it where you nominate a word and each team takes turns singing pieces of song containing that word. If a team can’t come up with the next song, they’re out. Example: the nominated word is “sun”. You might sing The Sun Broke Into Your Heart, after which the next team sings The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas. The word doesn’t have to be in the title, but you get the idea.
2. Twenty Questions
Beginner
The beginner format should really be called Unlimited Questions, and comes with a correspondingly loose limit on answers. Make sure what you’re thinking about is familiar and comforting.
Example:
“Is it a duck?”
“It’s actually one of your toys.”
“Is it my duck toy?”
“Try to think less in terms of ducks.”
Intermediate
The intermediate version should also be called Unlimited Questions, but the answers are now strictly yes/no. Clues may be given at the twenty question mark.
Example:
“Is it a duck?”
“No.”
“Is it a dog?”
“No.”
“Is it a kitten?”
“No.”
(Seventeen questions later:) “Is it a fox?”
“I’ll give you a clue. It’s actually not an animal at all.”
Advanced
The true game of twenty questions. Think of a familiar object. The guesser asks up to twenty yes/no questions with the aim of guessing the object.
Example:
“Is it an animal?”
“Yes.”
“Is it my brother?”
3. Blankety Blank/Madlibs/Exquisite Corpse
Beginner
Begin a story, song, or series of disconnected sentences, based on a familiar and comforting theme. Pause every once in a while for the listener to insert his or her own choice of word.
Example:
“Once upon a time, there was a little house which looked almost exactly like our house at home, except the door was coloured….?”
“Puke!”
Intermediate
Take turns providing whole sentences, or assign one person to descriptions and the other to dialogue.
Example:
“Once upon a time there was a little house which looked almost exactly like our house at home. Then one day, a little girl came knocking at the door and she said….?”
“I’m going to puke!”
(Edit:) Mel plays Pass The Story around a whole group, keeping it moving with a limit of two or three sentences each.
Advanced
Either take turns adding whole paragraphs to the story, or switch roles so the child is doing all the heavy lifting, with the parent chiming in now and then.
Example:
Like this, but played verbally.
4. Guess the Picture
Beginner
Using an index finger, draw a picture of a familiar object on the child’s palm. Say the name of the object.
Example:
“We’ve got a long, straight piece with a curve… and two bits here… it’s your sled!”
Intermediate
Using an index finger, draw a picture of a familiar object on the child’s palm or back. Ask them to guess what the object is. Get them to try with their eyes closed.
Example:
“And along… and around… and across the top…”
“Is it my sled?”
Advanced
Ask the child to close their eyes. Using an index finger, write a word on the child’s palm or back. Ask them to guess what you’re writing.
Example:
“R… O… S…?”
“Correct so far…”
“E… B…. U…”
5. Remember That Time When We…
Beginner
Reminisces about a favourite experience. Be sure to use silly voices and plenty of silly hand gestures. Encourage your child to mimic the noises and gestures.
Example:
“Remember that time we drank pink milk? And we took a looooong straw – show me your long straw – and we went glub glub glub glub until it was all gone.”
Intermediate
Ask your child if they remember a particular event. Get them to flesh out the details. Invent fanciful details. See where it goes.
Example:
“Remember that time we bought pink milk? What happened next?”
“We drank it.”
“Yes! And we turned into unicorns.”
Advanced
Like intermediate, but with pegasi, which are much more advanced.
What Should We Try For Next Time And/Or Do You Know Anything About My Thai Holiday Photos?
If you have a favourite car game which encourages kids to focus inwardly on safe subjects, please say.
Alternatively, if you know what on earth keys my children mashed in order to link all my holiday photos with randomly-assigned and unrelated thumbnails making them almost impossible to work with, that would be awesome, too. Otherwise my next post will be Five Equipment-Free Travel Games To Play When Stranded For A Prolonged And Indefinite Period Of Time At A Small Immigration Area On The Thai-Malaysian Border Wondering What Has Become Of Your Luggage.
Who’s Driving The Bus?
The Fives at Fives On The Fly play a Guess Who style game. The aim is to guess the answer to the question: “Who’s driving the bus?”, where the “bus” doesn’t have to be a real bus, nor the “driver” an actual driver – they can be a friend, relative, or favourite fictional character (for example). Guessers can ask yes/no questions.
This post is part of a series on using travel games to ease culture shock in young children. See part one: Five equipment-free travel games which help ease culture shock by promoting gentle engagement (transport edition).
The post Five equipment-free travel games which help ease culture shock by creating a mental cocoon (transport edition) appeared first at Journeys of the Fabulist.
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I’m late to this party – but these are great games! Pinning..
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Thanks! Add any you can think of as well.
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oh thanks dear, now I have it stuck in my head for a whole day: “pillow on the pillow goes pillow pillow pillow…. “. Loved the ideas. unique.
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Sorry! In my defence, it was pretty much stuck in my head, too. And also, it’s much easier to listen to than whining!
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You have so much ideas! I can imagine you use them all up in the unbelievable land trip to Phuket!! Gotta print them out to bring on to the plane!
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Go ahead! Actually, that’s a good idea. I should learn how to do up a printable list.
If you have any of your own to add, please do – it’s the kind of thing where it’s always good to have something new to play.
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I will tell you when I am back. The airline sick bag is surely in my list!
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Definitely a good one. Worth printing out some of the comments, too – there’s a few more ideas in there!
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Awesome list of entertainment and refreshing to use the brain and not let kids drown in electronics. 🙂
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Apart from anything else, the batteries on my devices don’t last forever 🙂
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🙂
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I had to re blog this for future reference! Awesome list
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Reblogged this on The Kid Bucket List and commented:
Travel made easy without the need for screen time!
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This could be helpful for adults as well…….
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There is a surprisingly large cross-over between car games for kids and drinking games for college students. Every time I read a list of wholesome and old-fashioned ways to help kids “make their own fun” this plays on my mind.
Any to add?
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I don’t think so… you’re kind of the expert!
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On kids car games or on college drinking games? What impression have I given there?
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Hahaha!
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I remember those days. Quite fun for a while and guaranteed to send the kids in the back seat to sleep after a while. lol
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That’s always the hope 🙂 .
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Given our youngest child’s (High Five) obsession with buses and bus drivers, we play a game called “Who’s Driving the Bus?” Basically it is just asking yes/no questions to figure out a person, either real or fictional. Some of our most memorable drivers have been Nana, Fozzy Bear, and (be sure to buckle your seat belts) High Five himself.
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That’s a good one! I’ll add that one. I’ll definitely be buckling my seat belts if either of our two turn out to be driving. 🙂
Figured you guys would be the car games gurus. You’ve put a few miles on the clock by now!
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What a nice post! Oh I miss these days!
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I have fond memories of them from my own childhood. It’s somewhat harder work from this side… although hopefully give them some practice and they’ll lead the games a bit better!
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It’s a great idea and I hope many young mothers here read it!
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Great ideas. I’ll have to try them on the grandkids. Our daughter limits the kids video games, but they are definitely allowed out on long plane rides.:) –Curt
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Plane rides you just have to do what you have to do I think. They’re a particularly difficult environment when it comes to keeping kids settled.
Have you got any ideas to add? It’d be good to have some new ones…
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I am also loving these games and examples. I wish I had something to add, but we are so boring. I guess so far we haven’t had to really worry about such things as our kids have been quite young when travelling, but that is changing now. I especially love the idea of just singing though, I am sure that if I had thought of that before now then they would have made a few situations better!
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Oh my goodness I have a story about a singalong. (I might give a rundown of our trip first, though!) I’m not sure if every child’s as responsive to music, but ours certainly are – it can change everything.
I do think culture shock affects kids differently at different ages. T is now starting to show a few signs whereas before she cruised. P’s been the opposite so I guess it depends on personality.
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If nothing else, you made me chuckle.
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Come on, tell me you don’t also want to sing Ba Beels Bon Ba Bus next time you’re stuck getting somewhere far away. 🙂
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What a fun post! We always played “The song game.” You thought of a word that might appear in many songs (maybe moon, sun, beautiful, etc.). There are two teams. Teams take turns coming up with a song that includes that word (they have to sing the part of it that does). When one team can’t come up with a song, the other team wins.
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That’s a fantastic one! You know Æ plays an electronic variation of that where he concocts playlists on iTunes centred around a word or theme. So we get this weird mix of songs whose common element is they all contain the word “I’m” in the title. He would definitely go for your car game version (and probably win… maybe I should rethink this…)
I’ll add it now.
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Awesome! Hope it’s fun!
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Pass the story. Where one person starts the story, says two or three sentences, and then passes it. Use a familiar setting as the setting for the story: “Once upon a time, we were in our kitchen, making dinner when…”
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Thanks – I’ll make a note under the storytelling games. I like the idea of passing short bits of story around the whole group, and not just a few words back and forth.
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Great ideas! I will be using some of these on our trip back home to
Phuket. I hope you enjoyed your time there! I can’t wait to read about
It!
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Hope it makes the trip go smoother! Although I have to admit – if we’re going by plane, we will definitely rely heavily on the seat back entertainment system. Mind you, you’re doing a longer flight than our usual from London so even Disney movies might need a rest at some point!
Phuket stories definitely coming. You must be about ready for your next flight, or have I got my timings wrong?
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We had to extend again, so will be leaving this Wednesday! I can’t wait to be home 🙂
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Ha ha ha! Love the examples! ‘Is it my brother?’ – classic! I once sang ‘Blue Velvet’ non-stop on an 8-hour car journey. I just kept substituting colours and materials and kept going. ‘She wore leopard print leather woh woh woh…’, etc 🙂
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The sibling relationship is very complicated sometimes.
Eight hours non-stop! Did the other passengers all come that whole way with you, or did some of them hurl themselves recklessly from the moving vehicle half way along?
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Ha, it was only my mam, dad and sister – we were driving. Well, my dad was – poor man 🙂 I did sing Old McDonald for hours on a transatlantic flight though – many of the animals were not typical farm animals as I started running out 😉 The other passengers gave up and joined in as nobody could shut me up 😉
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Bless their hearts!
I’ve sung Old MacDonald to the point where I’m not really evening listening to what Old MacDonald is trying to raise up on his property. One day I got to the bit where I had to make the noises before I realised I’d just assigned Mac a hill tribe. Then I had to think about whether he was actively farming other human beings or whether it was some native title thing and what sort of sounds each of those scenarios would entail and then (simultaneously) my child started complaining that I’d stopped singing and I nearly crashed the car.
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Ha ha ha! Genius! What sounds did you come up with?!
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Mainly “I can’t drive with you whinging like that do you want me to pull over?” as I recall.
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🙂
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I recall another drive where B gave Mac an obelisk and I had no idea what sound she was expecting until she made the high pitched hum from 2001 A Space Odyssey …
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These are great ideas! I’ll have to keep them in mind for my next trip! Thanks!
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Hope you guys have some fun with them. Anything you usually play that I’ve missed?
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I spy is a staple in my car! 🙂
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I Spy is definitely one of our top games. It’s first on the “externalising” games list:
🙂
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Awesome. My kids watc movies in the car. Keeps them quiet (Frozen thirty times in a row requires earphones) and me sane, but if it’s a plane ride…. you’d have to get me on first. That’s its own game all by itself. It’s called how many milligrams of valium before we can drag mommy’s sleeping carcus on to the plane?
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There’s definitely a time and place for movies (and earphones – especially earphones).
And valium. The valium game doesn’t sound like as much fun, though…
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True, however it’s the only way to get mommy on the plane. Or a frying pan to the head, that could work too.
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Definitely take the valium in preference to the frying pan!
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Gosh, you have clever kids 😉
The version of 20 questions played in our car goes like this:
“dad, why did we stop?” (x13), “dad, why didn’t you stop?” (x5) “Dad, why are driving slowly?” “dad, go fastfastfast!”. And then it starts all over unless a clever mum fills the kids’ mouths with something to eat.
I might have to try with the duck. at least it would be a change 😉
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We haven’t been successful with all levels of all games yet. I’m cribbing a bit off my own childhood when I was significantly older.
You shouldn’t knock your version of 20 questions, though – it’s an extremely popular one 🙂 .
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Very common,yes, but popular…. hmm 😉
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True. Popular might not be the word.
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Enjoyed this post thoroughly, Bronwyn 🙂
Let me practice these games with my daughter first 🙂
Have a great day ahead…
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Any others you’ve played?
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Quite a few, when we were kids 🙂
One among them is counting the number of cars and trucks passing in front of us in the highway.
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That’s a good one for the previous post. I’ll go add it – thanks!
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Sad news on the photos. Sounds like a game of an entirely different sort. So you were able to download them on your computer?
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I think I’ve got it now, actually. They were still on my phone (thank goodness I didn’t delete them as they uploaded) they just didn’t upload properly. I’ve managed to sit down and remove them from the computer to start again and it seems to be ok. Just wasted a lot of time, that’s all!
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Oh thank heavens because if you couldn’t show me photos of Thailand I may have turned into a raving lunatic. Or at least a louder one.
Have I told you recently how incredibly humorous your posts are?
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Pretty recently but don’t let that stop you 🙂
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Not sure if you saw another reader’s comment on my blog after one of your comments saying how much she loved reading them. there you go. People are coming to my blog to read you. I’ll pay you next week. 🙂
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I didn’t see that one! I can’t take full credit, though – you need something or someone to play off in a game of banter. I find it very easy to comment on your posts.
(Oh stop. No you stop! Oh you!)
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Oh Sue, go easy or that big hat in Bronwyn’s avatar won’t fit her anymore. Bwahahaha!
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I thought her gravatar was looking bigger. 🙂
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Always look for the silver linings Bronwyn. I had a chuckle when you mentioned waiting in immigration for your luggage. The one time I went to China we flew into Beijing as a group (of five) on a commercial flight. One of my colleague’s luggage got lost and we waited for him as he reported it and filled out the paperwork. Of course, the luggage area (and airline reps) were in between immigration and customs. So we were delayed between the two for about an hour. ha! When we eventually left (the airline had promised to forward his luggage when it showed up), the customs officers had all left. Apparently there were no more international flights that day and they hadn’t noticed our delay so they all went home. We looked around and asked for customs for about 15 minutes, before we gave up and just walked out to the road. It felt kind of weird – like we were breaking the law or somehing – but what are ya gonna do?
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At first when I read that I thought it was the immigration officers who’d gone home and I was shocked at the lack of border control.
But no! Just the ones who check to see if you’ve got an obscene quantity of expensive, illegal drugs on you. Bet you were kicking yourselves you didn’t have anything expensive and illegal to get away with?
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Yep, if only I had had the foresight (literally) to have anticipated this. Oh well.
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You could have been wealthy beyond your wildest dreams! And also morally culpable for certain harms.
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Loving these games and the examples! Good luck with the photo retrieval, that is well beyond me.
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I think I might have found where my computer stores the things so I can purge and start all over again. I am really glad I have a policy of never deleting the pictures off my phone as I upload, though…!
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