Fun bus activities: bus recreations that liven up field trips and school excursions
Introducing “bus rec” activities for children in daycare, kindergarten, and elementary school! As the pleasant season approaches, the much-anticipated field trip day for kids is on its way.
For many children, it may be their first time riding a bus to visit an aquarium or a zoo with friends.
In this article, we’ll introduce “bus recreation” activities—games you can play on the bus to make the trip even more fun.
All of them are simple to prepare and have easy rules, so if you’re wondering how to keep kids engaged on the bus, give these a try.
They’re also great for livening up the bus on school trips!
Fun bus activities: Bus recreations that liven up field trips and school excursions (1–10)
Name Rearrangement Game
Let’s try a “name rearranging game,” where you scramble hiragana, line them up correctly in your head, and figure out what the original word is.
For younger children, you could start with short words, like simple animal names.
It might be a bit harder, but playing with classmates’ names could make it even more exciting.
Who am I?
Let’s play a game of ‘Who am I?’ where we give lots of hints that help everyone guess the answer while having fun together.
For example, if the answer is ‘bus,’ we would give hints related to buses.
It’s best to start with slightly difficult hints that are a bit hard to figure out at first.
Prepare plenty of hints like ‘It’s very big’ and ‘It can carry many people.’
Intro Quiz
When it comes to classic bus-friendly games that really get everyone excited, you can’t go wrong with an “intro quiz.” It does require some advance preparation, but the idea is simple: play only the intro of a song and have people guess the title.
Choosing songs that everyone is likely to know will make it even more fun for the whole group.
Ask people to raise their hands as soon as they know the answer.
Lip-Sync Quiz
It’s a handy game that instantly quiets things down when the bus gets way too noisy (lol).
Still, you can probably hear giggles popping up here and there.
Since it’s a game where you guess what someone is saying from their lip movements, you have to look closely at your friend’s face.
Don’t try it while eating snacks.
It’s also fun to split into groups and compete.
Lip-Sync Telephone Game
The telephone game is where a message is passed from the person at the front of the line to the person at the back to see if it stays accurate.
Let’s try playing the telephone game using only lip-reading.
Since it’s lip-sync, you must not make any sound.
Some kids might accidentally blurt it out though (lol).
Use simple words like animal names, about 2–3 characters long, and pass them to the back.
When it reaches the last person in line, they raise their hand and say the answer.
Will the message be passed on correctly?
Rock-paper-scissors game
While traveling by bus, even if you’ve prepared a few games and activities, there may be times when you end up with a little extra time or the students get bored.
In those moments, how about playing a simple game of rock-paper-scissors? Try a survival-style match: have the teacher play against the students, and any student who loses to the teacher puts their hand down, while those who win stay in and keep advancing.
Simple riddle
Riddles that can be enjoyed by everyone from small children to adults.
You can also adjust the time by changing the number of questions, so they’re perfect for bus activities.
And riddles are very popular with kids.
It’s great to bring a riddle book, and there are plenty of riddle videos, too.
Prepare lots of questions, from easy ones to slightly harder ones.
10-second game
This is a stopwatch-based game called the “10-Second Game.” At the signal “Start!” press the stopwatch.
Without looking at the running time, count to ten in your head, and stop the stopwatch when you think ten seconds have passed.
Naturally, the person who stops it exactly at 10.00 seconds wins! But does anyone actually manage to hit exactly ten seconds…? Let’s decide the winner by whoever is closest—whether it’s in the 9-second range or the 10-second range—and have the person farthest from 10 seconds do a penalty game!
Fingerplay ‘Obentō Bus’
Since we’re riding the bus, let’s sing and play the bus fingerplay song “Obentō Bus”! We’ll sing and use our hands to show the numbers 1 to 10 with foods that go in a lunchbox.
For example, “1” is strawberry, “2” is carrot, “3” is cherry—simple, familiar foods for children.
As we sing, we show the numbers with our fingers.
It could also be fun to arrange the song and swap out the foods for other items from 1 to 10.
tic-tac-toe
As one of the bus activities, how about a true/false quiz that lets everyone learn bus rules and manners in a fun way? Because it’s game-like, kids are likely to pay close attention.
It could be exciting if you include exaggerated “don’t do this” examples, like the pre-ride videos at Universal Studios.