Car Counting Road Trip Printable Game ~ Fun & Free!
Our car counting road trip printable game makes a classic car trip game even more fun and engaging. And with the same free printable, you could adapt it to all sorts of different variations. We’ve got lots of ideas for you – let’s check it out!
We’re pretty sure every parent has, at some point on a road trip, told a bored kid some variation of, ‘Hey, count all the ____ color cars you see and tell me when you get to X number/ Whoever sees the most wins/ etc/etc”. We think, like discovering fire, or the wheel, this might be one of the first car road trip games exasperated parents invented. There’s even a 90’s one-hit wonder song referencing it. Counting car colours may even date to the time of ox carts or covered wagons (editors note: the previous ‘historical’ fact is entirely fabricated).
Regardless of how this road trip classic got started, our free printable game takes counting car colors from looking for one type of car, to looking for them ALL. This means less waiting and more counting, which is perfect for younger/shorter attention spans.
As we’ve already suggested, many families are likely already doing some sort of car counting activity – we certainly were when our kids were little – but we wanted a version with a little more instant payout and less waiting for just one type of car.
Why is this printable game so GREAT?
- Remembering the count for one type of car is fairly easy, but all the types? That needs a tracking sheet!
- There is something satisfying about checking off or coloring in the little circles as you see each type of car – like a good to-do list!
- You will get a bunch of the common colours, so there is always something to do, and the rare ones will feel extra cool when you finally get to see one.
- Don’t tell the kids, but there is a WHOLE BUNCH of learning you can do with this simple sheet. From the obvious color identification all the way up to percentages – you can turn a simple car spotting game into any number of extension activities (more on this below!)
Our Fun & Free Car Counting Road Trip Printable Game – How to use it…
We have broken things down by age range and given you some possibilities to scale based on your kids and your family. As always, if your household loves competition, this can always be a competition. If you have cooperative-game-mentality folks, then you can do a team one. You know you best – so compete or not – it will still be fun.
Young kids:
- Predicting what colors they think will be the most/least popular
- Simple color identification, organization and recording
- Counting tally circles and printing the totals
- Checking to see if their predictions matched the totals
- Compare the colour of the car you are riding in to your tally sheet – Are you a common or uncommon car colour?
- Replayability – do you think the most popular color on the way to our destination will be the same color on the way home? What about when we visit this new province/state?
Older Kids
- All the same stuff as above, but you can add stakes if you like (whoever predicts the right colour gets to pick dinner tonight, etc.)
- Totaling up all the car colours counted to get a grand total of all the cars you’ve seen.
- Using the grand total to calculate percentages for each category (OK I know this is math-y, but I am a math teacher and I can tell you that it is never too soon to practice percentages – it is so important and a very common skill gap)
- For example – “We saw 26 blue cars, 3 yellow cars, etc, etc for a grand total of 145 cars of all colours. Blue cars represent 26/145 x 100 = 18% of cars but Yellow cars are only 3/145 x 100 = 2%!”
- If you have a very math-y crew who are also fans of predictions, you can now use your percentages to make educated guesses what each colour of car might be before it passes you! (I know I’m reaching here, but I also know there are some stats-nerds-in-the-making who will be super into this too.)
- And be sure to label your sheets as to where you did your observations.
- If you play this game in different parts of the country/world, will the same colours always be the most popular?
- Is there someplace where Orange cars are really popular?
- Is there a boring place where everyone drives grey, white or black cars only?
Road Trip Tip! Don’t worry about running out of your child’s favourite game: put your printables in plastic sheet protectors like these and reuse the games with dry erase markers!
We’ve got more help for your Road Trip here:
Need more fun printable ideas? Check out our 25+ Free Road Trip Printables for a Truly Fun Family Car Trip – you will definitely find something for your kids’ age range and interests, including our Fun & Free Road Trip Scavenger Hunt Printable and our Road Trip Bingo Printable Game ~ 10 Free & Fun Cards (PDF download).
If you want more fun ideas? We have a field-tested 25+ Family Fun Road Trip Activities and Games to Make the Hours Fly By! ; our list of car crafts, games and activities for you to stock up on to save your sanity.
We highly suggest our Family Trip Survival Guide with ideas on how to organize your car, what to keep handy and what to have as a backup plan as your journey out on the highway with kids.
Keep your road trip food budget on track with our Travel Recipes: 20+ Meals to Make in a Hotel Room Microwave or Kitchenette .
You can find more road trip fun here, too:
25+ Free Road Trip Printables for a Truly Fun Family Car Trip
Robin and Ed are a DIY-loving couple with over 25 years of design and build experience. Also, Robin is a Nutritionist and former Registered Dietitian and Ed is an award-winning Business Educator. We share strategies for living a rich life on a DIY budget: creative money-savvy ideas for a stylish home, healthy meals and family fun. Our work has been published in the pages of Do It Yourself, Farmhouse Style and Better Homes & Gardens magazines.
