My daughters BFF, introduced my family to playing “Yellow Car” while we are in the car. It is pretty simple to play.. you just keep your peepers on the lookout for.. you got it, yellow cars. You will be surprised just how many there are on the road.

I get in on the game too and have even found myself blurting out “yellow car” when I am in the car by myself. In our car, school buses and construction vehicles are fair game.

My kids are a wee bit competitive with each other and have taken the game one step further and have a running tally (small notebook that we keep in the car) of who has spotted more yellow cars. So far my 3 year old son is in the lead. He has hawk eyes!

In our car we give bonus points for “smurf cars”, (electric blue, smurf colored cars/trucks) again, you will be surprised how many are “smurf colored cars” on the road.

To keep this game going and your little passagengers occupied, you could count motorcycles, police cars, big rig trucks, tow trucks, certain makes and models.. and so on and so on.

Oskie Wah Wah (pronounced Oz-key Wa–Wa)
My family has been playing this cow counting game since my Grandfather was a kid. None of us know where the silly name came from and I am sure there are many versions of this game with different names, but here is how to play my family version.

Divide the car occupants into two teams (left side of the car vs. right side of the car). As you travel keep your eyes open for cows in pastures on your side of the car. Once you spot a pasture of cows, yell out “Oskie Wah Wah“, count the cows you see on your side of the car. If you pass a field full of lots of cows, you’d better count fast! If you pass a cemetery on your side of the car, you lose all your cows. The team that spots the most cows on their side of the car at the end of the road trip wins! If the team with cows on their side forgets to yell out “Oskie Wah Wah“… they don’t get the count for cows and the other teams will get the count. By yelling “Oskie Wah Wah“, you give the other team an opportunity to count your cows and verify that in fact you counted X amount of cows.

My kids are a bit young for this, but I used to play this game growing up. Way back then my Grandfather didn’t Google to print out a map, he made photocopies and we got a fresh page every trip.

To make this game a little more eco-friendly, I suggest printing out an easy to read map of The United States and have it laminated. As you travel ask your kids to look for licence plates from different states and as they see license plates they cross off the state on the map with a crayon or dry erase marker. If you want to re-use your map over and over then instead of crayons use stickers. They are easier to remove. The first kiddo to get all of the states wins.

If you have any road trip activities that you would like to share please email us.