HandyFact - Games 
License Plates Game

Number of Players: 2 or more

Anyone who took long car trips with their parents as a kid along some endless US highway has probably played some version of the License Plates Game. The one I remember most was trying to "get" all 50 states before any of my siblings. We'd watch the cars sharing roads and we'd look for cars with out-of-state plates. Since most of our traveling was done in California, it was a real treat to see a car with a plate from somewhere as far away as Maine.

Luckily there was an Airforce base in the next town so we could sometimes add to our lists on trips to the grocery store. We didn't write down our lists, but rather tried to remember all the states' plates we'd seen. The trick was to "call it" when you saw the plate and then no one else could count that plate on their list. So if it were the rare East Coast plate, you were lucky if you saw it first. 

For my family, the game was on-going, but a "winner" could be the person who had the most states by the end of the drive, or the end of the vacation, or the end of the summer etc.. My parents would sometimes help our youngest sister and brother catch up to us older kids by finding plates for them… but only if my parents saw the plate and called it before we could.

Many variations of the License Plates Game exist. Here are a couple:

For younger kids who cannot read, have them look for plates with different colored writing or plate colors.

For younger kids who cannot read but can recognize letters or numbers, have them look for plates and count as high as they can beginning with "1" and working up sequentially. They can stop at 10 (and then start over again or go backwards) or keep going through double and triple digits (it gets harder to go in sequential order once you get into the double and triple digits.) 
Or have them go as far in the alphabet as they can starting with "A" and working through to "Z". The "winner" is the player who made it the farthest by the end of the trip or by a certain time.

Another observation game that is similar, but doesn't require the reading of plates (sometimes difficult at 65+ MPH) is for each player to pick a car color or type and count how many cars along the way of that color or type that they see. The "winner" is obviously the one who sees the most of their color or type. 
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