How Many Steps Will It Take?

# of Players: 2+
Equipment Needed: None
Time per Game: Varies
Age Group: 5+

Here's a simple game that I play with my kids when we still have a bit of walking to do before reaching our destination, and the complaints of boredom start coming. It's a great and simple distraction vehicle when you need to walk briskly from one end of the mall to another, for example. Always saves me from having to pick the kids up in my arms. It's also actually a distraction game that my wife (then girlfriend) and I sometimes played as adults trekking from one end of Boston to another in our first few years after college.

With a specific destination in mind, each player simply guesses how many steps it'll take before that destination is reached. Then, you count aloud the actual steps as you're walking them, and the person with the closest guess is the winner. If the destination is so far away that a single game won't provide enough distraction, simply break it into multiple rounds by picking interim milestones along the way and guessing the number of steps to each one.

For some reason, until you've played it a few times, I think you'll find that your guesses always underestimate the number of actual steps.