Thursday, May 6, 2010

How to keep a kid busy in the car

We had a long car ride back from Idaho today. About an hour away from home Kyle started to get sort of antsy. I had to do something, but what?!?

I decided to have him tell me what color the trucks were that we were passing on the freeway. That was great.

Next I decided that I would tell him I saw a truck that was a certain color and see if he could find it. That was even better.

Finally I decided that I would pick a color and tell him he had to find one truck that was that specific color before he could 'find' another truck that was a different color. He loved it!

Red, white, and blue are fairly easy to find: I am pretty sure the bulk of trucks on the road are one of these three colors. Green was moderately difficult. Orange, black, purple, yellow, and all the other colors out there were definitely the most difficult. We looked for an orange truck for over 10 minutes. The amazing thing about that 10 minute time-span? Kyle never forgot what color of truck he was looking for. He amused himself by naming off the other colors of trucks going by, so I thought he had forgotten what color we were looking for. No! When I asked him if he remembered he quickly said, "Orange!" Yay Kyle!

After he got a bit bored with the colors of trucks I started asking him to find random things, such as tractors. He would look around and say "is that a tractor? Noooo! That is a ____(<-insert whatever object he was talking about here)." It was so cute to listen to that I turned the radio off completely. He is such a little smartie!