29 January 2013

The 'Yellow Car Game'

With the Hubby being home for the last six weeks, we got alot of family quality time. So when we went for a drive over the weekend, we played our 'Yellow Car Game'. I know, I got your interest now, haven't I!? Well, this Mama is very unwilling to have her kids grow up thinking, the only entertainment comes from electronics. Sorry. So we do NOT have a DVD player in the car - we have to come up with ways to make it fun without. And fun it is! - a simple act of being together as a family.

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of cars in black, white, blue, and gray, and then there are just a few with 'brighter' colors? Well, yellow is pretty rare, though it has become more popular these days. For the kids, it sticks out and is pretty easy to find. So we play 'find the yellow cars'.

Now of course, there are some rules to this! One yellow car, jeep, pickup truck, etc... gets you ONE point, and one point only! One yellow hummer gets fifty points. Yep, you heard it right, 50 solid points. Then you get two points for a yellow school bus on off-days only! This means, driving Monday through Friday, they don't count - you will get one point deducted from your total for each bus called out mistakenly. Now when you call the yellow transportation vehicle out, you also have to tap the ceiling of the car - otherwise, it won't count! Here is the tricky part: commercial cars (and truck trailers) do NOT count! So if you call out a yellow taxi by accident (because the front looked like a normal yellow car), and you tapped the ceiling, then you need to subtract one point. Sorry. Also, only the person who calls it out FIRST will get the point.... that's why it can get so wild!


On the first drive, we got the following results:
Daddy - 68 points
Mami - 45 points
Coqui - 39 points
Peanut - 6 points (yep, she plays, too)

Now on the way back, it was even wilder:
Coqui - 102 points (he got a hummer and a bunch of school buses!)
Daddy - 97 points
Mami - 73 points
Peanut - 2 points (she was just tired and maybe even getting sick already)

Now if you add all those numbers together, we got to see quite a few yellow vehicles on our drive. (Tip: driving down the highway with lots of dealerships helps - they all have at least one yellow car on display.)
And yes, it can get pretty loud in the car doing this, but it's so much fun! The kids love it. It makes them look outside, trains their eyes, and keeps their minds sharp. It also helps with addition and subtraction.

Try it out, see what happens to your family. We laughed so much......

1 comments:

C. Beth said...

I definitely need to teach the kids this game! Good addition practice too....