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!
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Fun bus activities. Bus recreations that liven up field trips and school trips (11–20)
Word association game
Games to play on the bus aren’t much fun if they end too quickly, right? It’s best when you can keep playing for a long time and suddenly realize you’ve already arrived at your destination! With this word-association game, you can keep it going as long as everyone’s vocabulary allows.
For example, if the prompt is “When you think of apples…,” you might answer “tasty” or “red,” saying whatever comes to mind from “apple.” If someone answers “red,” then the next person starts from “When you think of red…” and continues the chain to the next player.
Group singing
Singing together in unison on the bus is truly a lot of fun.
You can make a songbook before the field trip and sing from that, sing songs you’re currently learning at school, or sing action songs while doing the hand motions—any of those work! It’s wonderful how singing builds excitement for the trip.
Singing a cappella is great, and it’s also lovely if the teacher brings along a melodica or similar instrument to accompany everyone.
I wonder what’s inside the bag?
This game is always exciting and fun.
On the bus, prepare a transparent bag and put various items inside.
The person guessing should wear a blindfold, gently put their hand into the bag, and try to figure out what’s inside.
Friends around them must not say the answer.
Let’s liven things up by giving hints! If you pass the bag in order starting from the front seats of the bus, everyone can enjoy it.
Rhythm Game “The Greengrocer”
Let’s have some fun on the bus with the rhythm-and-clap game “The Greengrocer”! It’s a very simple game: players take turns naming things you’d find at a greengrocer.
If it’s something that belongs there, everyone claps; if it’s something that doesn’t, no one claps.
Simple as that.
But once the list gets long or the tempo speeds up, people start clapping by mistake—so funny! You can also switch it up and play with a bakery, a fishmonger, and more for extra fun.
Arrival time guessing game
These days, it’s convenient that map apps can give you a rough idea of travel time and estimated arrival time.
This is a game where you predict the arrival time the analog way, relying only on your own intuition.
Rather than a vague guess, each person should write down a precise predicted time like “X o’clock Y minutes” on paper.
Of course, whoever is exactly right wins, but it’s not easy to hit it perfectly.
Announce the results starting from the closest guesses, and if you prepare prizes for those whose predictions are closest, it will be even more exciting.
Tourist Destination Quiz
Think you know it, but not quite? This is a quiz game where you look at images and videos and guess the official names of tourist spots.
Even places that look familiar can be hard to name correctly—or you might not know their names at all.
You can enjoy a virtual travel vibe by looking at the images and videos, and the beautiful scenery can be soothing.
If it’s a place you’ve visited, it also makes for a great conversation starter.
How many tourist destinations can you guess?
Please give me a delicious rice ball.
“Please give me a tasty rice ball” is a bus activity that children in kindergarten or daycare can enjoy.
It’s a lively game where everyone plays while imagining their favorite onigiri.
The teacher introduces different fillings for the onigiri.
If it’s an onigiri you can eat, everyone says, “Yummy!” If the onigiri has a filling you can’t eat, answer, “We can’t eat that!” It gets even more exciting if you suggest fillings that make everyone wonder, “Is that really tasty, though?” even if they’re technically edible!
Word Search Game
It’s one of the word games children love.
What foods contain the syllable “n”? The answers might be things like “pan (bread)” or “mikan (mandarin orange),” and you keep going in that way.
The bus gets lively with all the different answers.
It also helps kids learn the names of things they don’t know.
If everyone counts how many answers they can come up with, the children will try even harder.
You can also enjoy it by splitting into groups and taking turns posing questions.
Telephone game in the palm of your hand
The classic recreation game of telephone.
This version is a telephone game where you write letters with your finger on someone’s palm to pass the message along.
Because you’re writing with a finger, it can be hard to understand or a bit ticklish, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? Since you’re on a bus, the shaking might make it harder to convey the message, but that could be another element that livens things up.
Will the message make it correctly all the way to the last person? It’s also fun to look back and figure out where it went wrong later (lol).
“Aaah” Game
It’s simple, but this “Aah” game is likely to be more exciting than you’d expect.
It’s a contest to see who can say “aaah” the longest—you can have everyone on the bus join in, or just a few people.
You could also set rules like advancing the top five longest “aaah” times.
Take a deep breath before you start, and using a small, clean humming tone will improve your chances of winning.