Car Games for Kids, and Road Trip Trivia with Answers

From the Super Trivia Kids team ·

Looking for games to play in the car that keep a long drive from turning into "are we there yet?" on repeat? Here are five screen-free car games for kids, plus 38 road trip trivia questions with answers, split into an easier round for K–2 and a harder one for 3–6.

The games come first because they need nothing but voices and windows. The trivia is all about the country you're driving through: states, landmarks and national parks. We checked every answer against the National Park Service, the National Archives, USGS, NOAA, the Census Bureau and state government sites, and they're listed at the bottom. After that there's a short, honest section about tablets in the car, because sometimes that's what keeps the peace.

Want questions your kids can answer on their own? Try Super Trivia Kids free in your browser. Every question is read out loud, so pre-readers can play too.

The short version

What are good car games for kids with no screens?

None of these five needs a board, a pencil or a charger, and all of them work with a kindergartner and a second grader in the back seat.

I Spy

One person says "I spy with my little eye something that is…" and gives a color, and everyone else guesses. For younger kids, colors work best. For older ones, try "something that starts with B," or "something that's shaped like a triangle." A good rule of thumb: it has to be something inside the car or something that will still be there in a minute. A truck that passed ten seconds ago is a recipe for an argument.

The license plate game

Everyone hunts for plates from different states, and you keep one shared list. Try playing it as a team against the map, not against each other, which ends a lot of fights before they start. There are 50 states, so it rarely gets "finished" on one drive, and that's fine. Older kids can add up the numbers on a plate, or try to make a word from its letters.

20 Questions

One person thinks of an animal, a person or a thing. Everyone else gets 20 yes-or-no questions to figure it out. Older kids can practice good opening questions, like "Is it bigger than our car?" Younger ones may lead with "Is it a dog?" Both are allowed.

The alphabet game

Find the letters A through Z, in order, on signs, trucks and buildings outside. You can play together or each on your own side of the car. Q and Z take forever, so one option is to count a Q or a Z anywhere in a word, like the Z in "pizza." For pre-readers, a grown-up can call out the letter you're hunting for and let them spot its shape.

Would you rather

"Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or a pet dragon?" The fun is in the "why." It's a good game for the long, flat stretches where there's nothing to spy, and it's the one that turns into a real conversation most often. Take turns asking, so the quiet kid gets a turn to pick the questions too.

One rule for all of these: the driver can play the talking games if they want, but the driver's eyes stay on the road. Someone else keeps the list, reads the questions and checks the answers.

Road trip trivia for kids: easier round (K–2)

Read a question, give everyone a few seconds to think, then tap "Answer." These work as car trivia for kids because nobody needs to read or write.

The states and the flag

  1. How many states are in the United States?
    Answer50.
  2. How many stars are on the American flag?
    Answer50, one for each state.
  3. How many stripes are on the flag?
    Answer13. They stand for the 13 original colonies.
  4. Which state is the biggest?
    AnswerAlaska.
  5. Which state is the smallest?
    AnswerRhode Island.
  6. What bird is the national emblem of the United States?
    AnswerThe bald eagle. Congress chose it in 1782.

Famous landmarks

  1. What is the Statue of Liberty holding up in her right hand?
    AnswerA torch.
  2. What color is the Statue of Liberty?
    AnswerGreen. She's made of copper, which turned green naturally over time.
  3. How many presidents' faces are carved into Mount Rushmore?
    AnswerFour: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
  4. What color is the Golden Gate Bridge?
    AnswerOrange. The official color is called International Orange.
  5. The Liberty Bell is famous for something you can see on its side. What is it?
    AnswerA big crack. The bell is in Philadelphia.

National parks

  1. Old Faithful shoots hot water high into the air. What is it called when the ground does that?
    AnswerA geyser. Old Faithful is in Yellowstone National Park.
  2. What was the first national park in the world?
    AnswerYellowstone. It became a national park in 1872.
  3. What carved out the Grand Canyon?
    AnswerA river, the Colorado River.
  4. Two kinds of big reptiles live together in south Florida, near the Everglades. What are they?
    AnswerAlligators and crocodiles. South Florida is the only place where America's two kinds live side by side.

Road math

  1. You spot 3 license plates from one state and 4 from another. How many plates is that?
    Answer7.
  2. A car has 4 wheels. How many wheels do 2 cars have?
    Answer8.
  3. You have 10 snacks for the trip and eat 3 before lunch. How many are left?
    Answer7.

Road trip trivia for kids: harder round (3–6)

States and history

  1. Which state was the first to approve the US Constitution?
    AnswerDelaware, on December 7, 1787. That's why it's called "the First State."
  2. Which was the 50th state, and in what year did it join?
    AnswerHawaii, in 1959.
  3. Which state's official nickname is "the Lone Star State"?
    AnswerTexas.
  4. What is the longest river in the United States?
    AnswerThe Missouri River, about 2,540 miles long. The Mississippi is close behind at about 2,340 miles.
  5. Name all five Great Lakes.
    AnswerSuperior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario. A trick for remembering: their first letters spell HOMES.
  6. Which Great Lake is the only one entirely inside the United States?
    AnswerLake Michigan. The other four are shared with Canada.
  7. Alaska covers about 665,000 square miles. Rhode Island covers about 1,500. About how many Rhode Islands would fit inside Alaska?
    AnswerMore than 400.

Landmarks

  1. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from which country?
    AnswerFrance. It was built there, taken apart, shipped to New York in 1885 and put back together.
  2. The tablet in the Statue of Liberty's left arm has a date on it, in Roman numerals. What date is it?
    AnswerJuly 4, 1776 (JULY IV MDCCLXXVI), the date of the Declaration of Independence.
  3. How tall is the Washington Monument: 155 feet, 555 feet or 1,555 feet?
    Answer555 feet.
  4. What words are written around the top of the Liberty Bell?
    Answer"Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants Thereof." It's a line from the Bible.
  5. Carving Mount Rushmore started in 1927 and ended in 1941. How many years is that?
    Answer14 years.

National parks

  1. What is the tallest mountain in North America, and what state is it in?
    AnswerMount McKinley, in Alaska. It's 20,310 feet tall and stands in Denali National Park, so you'll also hear it called Denali.
  2. Which national park holds the record for the hottest air temperature ever measured on Earth?
    AnswerDeath Valley, in California and Nevada. It hit 134°F on July 10, 1913.
  3. Death Valley also has the lowest point in North America. How far below sea level is it?
    Answer282 feet below sea level, at Badwater Basin.
  4. The largest tree in the world, measured by how much wood is in it, has a name. What is it?
    AnswerThe General Sherman Tree, a giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, California. It's almost 275 feet tall.
  5. The longest known cave system in the world is a national park. Which one?
    AnswerMammoth Cave National Park, in Kentucky.
  6. Arches National Park in Utah has more than how many natural stone arches: 20, 200 or 2,000?
    AnswerMore than 2,000.
  7. Yellowstone is in three states. Which state is almost all of it in?
    AnswerWyoming, with about 96%. The rest is in Montana and Idaho. Yellowstone also has more than half of the world's geysers.

Road math

  1. If you drive 60 miles every hour, how far do you go in 3 hours? And how long would the last 120 miles take?
    Answer180 miles in 3 hours. The last 120 miles would take 2 hours.

Why talking games? What the research says about playing together

Is "play together in the car" anything more than a nice idea? Nobody has studied I Spy on a highway, as far as we can tell. But a few findings point in a useful direction.

Play with the people around you matters. The American Academy of Pediatrics' report on play describes play with parents and other kids as a way children build language, self-control and social skills (Yogman et al., 2018). It's mostly about hands-on, unstructured play, and it warns about screens crowding that out. A car full of people guessing at 20 Questions is pretty close to what it describes.

Guessing helps it stick. Trying to pull an answer out of your head helps you remember it better than being told. One small study found that with kids around 10 years old (Karpicke, Blunt & Smith, 2016). It used word lists, not trivia, but it's a reason to wait a few seconds before anyone shouts out "Wyoming."

Teams beat rankings. A big review found that working toward a shared goal was linked to better achievement and better relationships between kids than competing against each other (Roseth, Johnson & Johnson, 2008). Those kids were 12 to 15, not kindergartners. Still, it's one reason to try the license plate game as one team against the map rather than keeping score between siblings.

To be clear about the limits: none of this was tested in a car, and none of it says screen-free games will make a kid smarter or kinder. It's just the closest evidence we found for why the talking games might be more than a way to pass the miles.

Is it OK to give kids a tablet in the car?

Honestly, sometimes it is the thing that keeps the peace. Handing a tablet into the back seat in hour three of a trip doesn't make anyone a bad parent. Every family is different, and so is every drive.

Here's what the research says. For kids 6 and up, the AAP doesn't set a single hour limit. It suggests consistent limits and a family media plan, and that media not push out sleep, activity or face-to-face time (AAP, 2016). A large review of 42 studies linked more screen time to slightly weaker language skills, but it also linked educational content and watching together with an adult to stronger skills (Madigan et al., 2020). Those links are small and don't show cause and effect, and most of the kids were young. There's also a report on what it calls "joint media engagement," which is a fancy name for using a screen together and talking about it (Takeuchi & Stevens, 2011). It's case studies, not a trial.

A simple plan to try:

If you want more ideas for the other end of the trip, there's a guide to family game night ideas, and more on what the research says about screen time.

Common questions

What are some games to play in the car with kids?

Five that need no supplies: I Spy, the license plate game, 20 Questions, the alphabet game and would-you-rather. They work for kids from kindergarten up, because nobody has to read or write. Playing the license plate game as one team against the map, instead of keeping score between siblings, tends to cut down on back-seat arguments.

What is good road trip trivia for kids?

Questions about the places you might drive through work well: US states, the flag, landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore, and national parks like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. Keep a K–2 round short and simple, with numbers and colors. Kids in grades 3–6 can handle dates, the Great Lakes and record-setting parks.

Is it OK to let kids use a tablet on a long car ride?

Many families do, and the AAP sets no single hour limit for kids 6 and up. It suggests consistent limits and keeping face-to-face time. Research links educational content and using screens together with an adult to better outcomes than solo, background viewing, though those links are small. The driver never plays or reads anything on a screen.

How do you play car trivia with kids of different ages?

Give each child questions from their own round, so a kindergartner gets "How many stripes are on the flag?" while a fourth grader gets the Great Lakes. Let an older sibling read questions to a younger one. Wait a few seconds before anyone answers, because trying to recall an answer helps it stick better than being told.

About this article. Written by the Super Trivia Kids team from the published sources listed below. We're not researchers, teachers or doctors. We checked each trivia answer above against the official pages listed below before publishing, and dropped any we couldn't confirm. The research notes come from the published studies and reports listed below, and every source links to the original so you can check our reading of it. If you spot a mistake, tell us through the support page and we'll fix it.

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