Any sane parent knows that the key to a relatively painless road trip is some planning to keep the kids occupied and happy in the car.
So you’re all packed up, ready to hit the road and looking to spend three hours in the car with your family till the next stop. This can be a great opportunity to practice some urdu with your children. I’m suggesting a few games below through which not only their urdu vocabulary will increase, but these will also open their eyes to the world outside the car windows. Observation is ofcourse the first step to self-directed learning.
Remember to play with your children so that you involve them and make life-time memories.
- Numbers through License Plates (Ginti ka khel): Every player has to count from 1 – 10 by finding the numbers from the license plates of the cars passing by. Once one player calls a number on a license plate the other can not use it and has to find another. All numbers have to said out in urdu and here’s a quick list for reference (1: eik, 2: do, 3: teen. 4: chaar, 5: paach, 6: chahy, 7: saat, 8: aath, 9: nau, 10: dus). Whoever gets to 10 first wins. If you want to increase the difficulty level, you can take it upto 20.
- Guess What (Boojho to Jannein): One player starts by asking the rest to guess a word that rhymes with the hint they give (ofcourse in urdu!). So it would go something like this: “Can you guess the word I have in mind that rhymes with naan?” (boojho to jainein mein ne kya socha? yo milta hai sunein mein lafz naan se). Everyone can now start guessing one by one “paan, maan, kaan”. Whoever guesses correct gets the next turn.
- Rainbow Game (QosoQaza): This is a great game to practice all the colors in urdu. Make as many small pieces of paper as the people in the car (excluding the driver). Now write a color on each: Red (surkh), Yellow (peela), Green (sabz), etc. Everyone picks a color at random and then counts the cars of that color till the next major town (pick that before hand). Whoever gets the most cars wins. Notice that I didn’t pick white (sufaid) or black (kaala) as those would be easy wins. You can do a few variations of this game. Be creative, have fun!
Good ones, indeed. We have a few more that are for kids a little older (mine are 8 and 10, and yes, sadly they struggle with Urdu too). So we have “Tell a Story in Urdu”, with negative points for English words/phrases used. Then we basically have translation games, where we either tell them words in English that they have to translate, like sea shells (samundari seepiaan), snails (ghoongay) etc. You know, things we commonly refer to by their English names. Or play sort of a dictionary game, where they have to guess meanings of hard Urdu words by way of asking for one/two hints. Like, shehanshahi, or sannatta. Even though it does make you want to pull your hair out when you ask, “‘Snails’ ko Urdu main kya kehte hain?’ And your 8-year old allama says “Escargot!”
wow! I love these games! and i can see how they would help expand the urdu vocabulary. Thanks so much for sharing!
Cool ideas! And the ones in the comment above too!
Awesome post. Love these games! We used to count buses etc but I love the number game with the license plates. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thanks for your comment Zaineb! We will try counting the buses next time. Great idea 🙂