• Travel games can help keep preschoolers entertained on the road.Road to Heaven image by Jason from Fotolia.com
  
  One of the challenges of traveling with young children is keeping them entertained during all the hours of sitting. Whether on a plane, in a car or on a train, preschoolers' usual toys and activities, such as train sets, floor puzzles and role-playing aids, are difficult to bring along while traveling. Games that are based on verbal interaction and the travel environment keep preschoolers entertained and connected with the rest of the family.
  
  

Alphabet Game

• The alphabet game helps preschoolers on car trips practice finding letters in the alphabet in the proper order. Starting with the letter "A," preschoolers must find the letter on something outside of the car. Letters can be found on things such as billboards, road signs, license plates and lettering on trucks. As soon as the child has found a letter, he moves on to the next letter in the alphabet. Multiple children can play the game cooperatively by moving on to the next letter as soon as anybody finds the current letter or competitively by finding each letter on their own.
  
  

Storytelling Game

• Preschoolers can use their imaginations to create stories with the people they are traveling with in the storytelling game. One person starts the story by telling about a character, a setting, a situation or any combination of the three. The storyteller then stops and lets a different person continue the story in whatever way they want to. An optional rule for preschoolers who are beginning to understand the concept of sentences is that each person must add three whole sentences to the story. Another optional rule is that the storyteller must stop in the middle of a sentence and let somebody else complete it.
  
  

Edible Necklace Game

• A simple homemade edible necklace can serve dual purposes as both a travel snack and a scorecard for an ongoing game. Before going on the trip, preschoolers can each make an edible necklace out of string and small doughnut-shaped pieces of cereal. At the beginning of the trip, preschoolers learn the rules for what they have to find in order to eat a piece of the necklace. Ideas for things to look for include a specific color of vehicle, animals, people wearing a specific article of clothing or a letter of the alphabet.
  
  

Rhyming Game

• Preschoolers must think creatively and pay attention to sounds when playing the rhyming travel game. To start the game, somebody names an item he sees somewhere. Then everybody else has to think of as many words as they can that rhyme with that item. For example, if somebody saw a car, potential rhymes include jar, far, tar and bar. The rhyming game has the added benefit of allowing adults to help preschoolers build their vocabularies by suggesting words that the preschooler may not know yet.