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)
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).
Atama-Oshiri Game
A game where you decide the first and last letters in advance and think of words that follow those rules.
For example, if the first is “mi” and the last is “to,” you could say “minato” (harbor) or “mini tomato.” It’s also a good idea to set rules like awarding higher points for longer words.
It’s a simple yet exciting bus activity.
The thrill of waiting for your turn and the sense of achievement when you think of a word are appealing, and it naturally fosters concentration and creativity.
Unique answers spark laughter and instantly brighten the atmosphere on the bus, which is another highlight.
Since it requires no tools and can be started right away, it’s a popular game for making travel time fun.
Fun bus activities. Bus recreations that get everyone excited on field trips and school trips (21–30)
Yamanote Line game
It’s a classic bus activity with simple rules that anyone can join right away.
For example, if you pick the Japanese syllabary as a theme, it naturally trains creativity with words and builds vocabulary.
Keeping a brisk pace creates a little thrill, and each time your turn comes around, you get to enjoy the fun of thinking on the spot.
The atmosphere in the bus also brightens quickly—people may panic when they can’t think of something, or burst into laughter at unique answers.
As everyone keeps it going together, a sense of unity emerges, and the travel time flies by in this enjoyable game.