Print them at home, clip them to something hard and hand out pencils: felt tips and car seats don’t mix. Everything here is free, with no sign-up.
Travelling Bingo
Name:
Picture cards for little ones and word cards for readers, all different.
MINE!
Spot it first, shout “MY pylon!” and score it.
First to 50
Score the next car. Lorries are good, caravans are bad news.
Number Plate Bingo
Name:
Tick off the alphabet from the cars around you.
Also: Squares, our dots-and-boxes game where the things you spot decide how many lines you get.
From the archive, 2003
Before there were any tablets in the back seat there was this: our first book of car games and puzzles, made in 2003 and still free to download. It is old enough to have a Happy Eater on one of the spotting cards, but the games work as well as they ever did.
The rules of every printable game on the site, with a link to its sheet.
Use the printable sheet. Every time you see something on the sheet, yell ‘MY…!’ (whatever the object is you’ve spotted) and mark the points on the sheet. Fill your names in across the top of the score card so that each person gets their own column.
You are not allowed to spot the same thing again until two other items have been spotted. The winner is the person with the most points after an agreed time.
Each player is given one card and a pencil to mark their boxes. When an object on the card is spotted, mark an X on its box. When a person completes a row (up, down, across or diagonal), they win.
Play until one person wins two games or, if fewer people are playing, the first to win three out of five.
Travelling Bingo is an observation game. Matching the pictures on the card to the real thing helps little ones with recognition, and marking the boxes is good practice for small hands.
Our original bingo sheets came with three ways to play:
Print the cards onto card and laminate them and you can use them over and over again: mark them with a wax crayon or a wipe-off pen.
Write the letters of the alphabet on a piece of paper (or use our printable sheet). Then encourage your child to look out of the window and see which letters they can see on the number plates of nearby cars, and tick them off as they find them.
If you want the game to last a little longer, or to make it more challenging for an older child, have them find the letters in sequence: they can’t cross off the D until they have found the A, B and C first.
Print the sheet and either give one to everyone playing or put it somewhere in the car where everyone can see it. Take it in turns, starting with the person in the front passenger seat and going clockwise.
In the countryside, where there is little traffic, each player scores on the ‘next car’. When it’s busy, the player gets the car immediately behind the next silver car.
| What you get | Points |
|---|---|
| Audi TT | 50 |
| Euro plate | 20 |
| Lorry or van | 10 |
| Car | 5 |
| Caravan | minus 10 |
| Police car | out of the game! |
The scores can be doubled up, so if someone gets a lorry or van with a Euro plate they score 30 points. The winner is the first to get 50 points.
Game 2 is played the same way, but to make it more fun and make the game last longer, the empty squares at the bottom of the sheet are for your own extra points and penalties: colour them in with your own coloured cars or objects. The ‘have a sweet’ square is a bonus square and scores no points. It should be something fairly rare, though, otherwise you’ll end up with the whole car being sick!
Audi stopped making the TT in 2023, so these days it really is worth 50 points. If you never see one, agree on another rare car before you set off.
Print the sheet and give one to everyone playing, or share one between two.
Game 1. Everyone has a pen or pencil and takes turns to draw one line between two dots. Whenever you finish a square, put your initials in it and have another go. The winner is the one with the most squares once the sheet is filled.
Game 2. Deal out the spotting cards from the sheet between the passengers. Every time you see one of yours you get to draw:
For added fun: if you have the card with the white dot and you see it, you get a treat from the driver. If you have the card with the red dot and see it, you can swap any of your cards with a player of your choice. The winner is the one with the most squares once the sheet is filled.
