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As you like know, we love games and road trip games are no exception around here! This free printable road trip scavenger hunt game is perfect for family road trips or car rides with your little ones. It is a great way to pass time on a long car ride and is so easy to play.
We were gearing up for a fun spring break road trip that was going to lead to 40+ hours of travel time with my 3 young children. I decided now was the time to put some thought into creating some car games to pass the hours in the car. I knew I would be thankful for some fun, new activities when we hit the point in our long road trip when my kids ask “how much longer” a million times. 🙂
Whether you are taking a short trip to grandma’s house or embarking on a cross country trip this game is a fun way to spend time as a whole family and is great for older kids and younger kids alike.
This travel game is a spin off of the classic game eye spy or scavenger hunt game. It is a perfect way to get your kids away from screen time during your trip and break up the time between stretch breaks.
There are some classic travel games like the USA license plate game and the A-Z scavenger hunt (we call it the alphabet game) that we love. However, this scavenger hunt is also going into our stash of travel activities to bring with on our next vacation because it was a hit! If you are looking for other ways to pass time on your trip here are some of my favorite screen free travel activities as well as my tips and tricks when taking road trips with kids.
Materials
All you need is the free printable scavenger hunt that is linked below and a pen or dry erase marker! I know space is super limited on road trips and this car game is compact and easy to travel with. A sure win in our house!
I laminated these because I knew we would want to reuse them on the trip and for future trips. I’m so glad we did because we played this multiple times over the span of our trip!
How To Play Road Trip Scavenger Hunt
You can make the rules of the game as simple or complex as you would like. We like playing it cooperatively, where everyone works together to complete the list, but you can make it into a race or competition to be the first person to complete their entire list as well. (I could see older kids really liking this option!) Just make sure you set the ground rules before you hand out the sheets and start the game.
- Give each person a scavenger hunt card and marker or dry erase marker
- Have your kids keep their eyes open and look for the items on the game sheet
- As a person finds an item on the card have them mark it off
- You can either have them shout out the item they find so everyone can mark it off or you can have people silently find things to see who can find all the items first
- Once you have found all the items on the list the game is done- it is fun to have a fun reward when you have completed the card- suckers are my go to prize for car rides
Items On This Road Trip Scavenger Hunt Printable
I included 27 items on this scavenger hunt (did I mention we had 40 hours to kill ;)). Since my youngest kiddo is 4 and not yet reading all of the items are pictures with no words, this was really helpful because he felt so independent playing the game and I didn’t have to keep repeating the list of items that he needed to look for.
Here is the road trip scavenger hunt list:
- Airplane
- Road signs: stop sign, one way sign, yield sign, exit sign, speed limit sign, rest area sign, merge sign, road closed sign
- Camper being towed
- Train
- Water tower
- Bridge
- Tractor
- Semitruck
- Red car
- Blue car
- Construction cone
- Pig
- Cow
- School bus
- Green car
- Motorcycle
- Stop light
- Police car
- Horse
- Windmill
Your Free Printable Scavenger Hunt
You just need to complete the form above and a download link will be emailed to you immediately. This link will bring you to a digital file for you to download and print off. This game is for personal use at home or in your classroom. It is perfect for younger children, but also really fun for kids of all ages!
You can print off on regular paper and laminate if you would like. I highly recommend printing off in color but this can be printed in black and white as well.
Other Great Road Trip Activities
- USA License Plate Game
- Alphabet Scavenger Hunt
- Road Trip Word Search
I would love to hear your favorite travel games and activities to do with your kids so we can add it to our list!
