Car Games...

...to build language and working memory skills, help the time pass, and to stay entertained during any road trip!

Some of the best memories of my life so far have happened during a road trip of some sort... Yet road trips can feel painful and never-ending when there are kids in the back, kicking the seat and continuously asking, "Are we there yet!?"

Below are a couple of games to play during a car ride or really at any time, to keep the kiddos entertained, while also helping to promote their language and working memory development!

Game: Multiple meanings

How to play: Give your child a word that is either a homonym or a homophone. A homonym is a word that has the same spelling and pronunciation but multiple meanings (e.g. pants: something you would wear on the lower half of your body, or something that a dog might do after running in the heat). A homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word, but is spelled differently (e.g. through as in "going through the tunnel" or threw as in "she threw the ball"). 

Ask your child to use the word in a sentence that shows one meaning, then another... there are so many words like this that you or your child can come up with just by looking out the window: site, sight, cite; hoarse, horse; rode, road; reign, rain...

If your child is old enough, ask him or her to try to spell each of the words too! I played this for about an hour in the car with an 8 year old the other day, and he loved it!
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How this helps develop language skills: this game encourages your child to think flexibly about the multiple meanings a word might have, and how a word can be used in different contexts. It also helps with practicing spelling skills and "sounding out" words, as well as receptive language and word retrieval skills.

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Game: Word Scramble

How to play: Think of a word (a short one to start- probably no more than 3 letters). Give your child the letters that are in the word, but in the wrong order. You child's job will be to unscramble those letters to figure out the word you're thinking of. Gradually build up to longer words, and have your child scramble up some words for you to try too!

How this helps to develop language and working memory skills: This game encourages your child to work on spelling skills, practicing putting together letters in different ways such as in common blends (e.g. br, ch, th, etc.) and recognize the importance of vowels and where they "show up in relation to consonants. Working memory is the ability to hold and manipulate, or change around, information in short term memory to produce something new. Remembering the letters and mentally shifting them around to create a word is allowing your child to exercise his or her working memory skills!

Variation: If you're not driving, you could write the letters down for your child to look at while trying to unscramble. Or, they could write them down. This would take some of the load off of the working memory, and is a great strategy for those with working memory difficulty or when working with longer words.

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