Your Silver Cross

The following games* have been cleverly designed by the world’s leading psychiatrists to save your sanity.

Number plate bingo
Every passenger writes down 25 numbers between 1 and 999. If you can’t think of that many then ask an adult for some help. Now arrange them in a 5x5 grid. Cross the numbers off as you see them appear on car registrations. First one to get fi ve-in-a-row shouts ‘Bingo’, ‘Yippee’, ‘Hey-nonny-nonny’ or whatever word you all agree on.   

Count the cows
The name says it all for this game, so it’s best played on country roads. Count the cows on your side of the road, and pick a time or numerical limit. But be warned, if you pass a cemetery on your side, your opponent can shout, ‘Your cows are buried’ and indeed, you lose all your cows. Which seems a bit harsh.

Foil art
A 15 metre roll of aluminium foil costs £1.50. The aluminium foil can be used to create foil sculptures, such as birds, dinosaurs and egg cups. If each metre keeps a child entertained for half an hour, how long can you keep a car fi lled with four children happy for, if you have £6.85?

Palm writing
A game that the kids can play amongst themselves, meaning adults can go to sleep if they want (driver excluded). One child closes their eyes and holds out their hand. The other child now ‘writes’ on the hand using their fi nger. Points are awarded for guessing the letter or word; points are taken away if that word is a rude one.

Letter changes
You will need: 1x pen or pencil, 1x piece of paper, 1x car, 2+ players. Player one writes down a word, passes it to player two, who changes one letter and passes it on to the next player. Here’s an example of a game we played earlier: MEAL – SEAL – SEAT – MEAT – BEAT – BEAR – BEARS – TEARS etc. There was a small stoppage in play to debate whether ‘BEARS’ was acceptable as a plural, before we decided it was.

Car-aoke
It’s Karaoke, it’s in a car, therefore it shall be called car-aoke. It’s the law. If you’ve got younger kids you may find yourself singing ‘Wheels on the bus’ or ‘Row row row your boat’ for the 500th time, so if you want to make it more interesting, try making up a few of the verses. ‘The iPods on the bus go tish-tish-tish...’, etc.

i-spy
The original and still the best. I spy, you guess: everyone’s happy.

Fortunately/Unfortunately
A good game for slightly older kids. The fi rst person starts off with a sentence beginning with ‘Unfortunately’; the next player follows on, but their sentence starts with ‘Fortunately’. For example: ‘Unfortunately there’s a bee on my head.’ – ‘Fortunately it doesn’t have a stinger.’ – ‘Unfortunately it does have rather big teeth.’ – ‘Fortunately it’s in a good mood.’ And so on and so on until everyone’s happy, or asleep.

Over the rainbow
Pick a colour – we recommend a reasonably common one, not ‘Mount Fuji Green’ or ‘Cuckoo’s Egg Blue’ – now see if you can spot ten things of that colour as quickly as possible. Red car, red sign, red light, red shoes, red nose etc.

Simon says
Exactly who Simon was, we may never know. We can only guess that he was an extremely powerful man who had the respect of many people. It’s a little more limited when playing inside a car, but Simon says it really doesn’t matter.