EV charging stop with kids: 8 phone-free things to do in 20 minutes

A fast-charging stop is one of the few waits you can predict to the minute. That makes it perfect for a game, and a trap for a phone. The problem is the space: your child is in the back seat, you’re in the front, and there’s no table. So most of these are talking games. Two are for outside the car, when it’s safe to stretch your legs.

One safety rule first: the driver never reads a game sheet while driving. A passenger asks the questions, or save the games for the stop itself.

Inside the car: talking games

1. Charging-station maths

Ask your child to read three numbers off the charger screen: how many kWh have gone in, the price per kWh, and how many minutes it took. Then tell them your car’s consumption from the dashboard, for example 18 kWh per 100 km.

Now they work it out:

• Kilometres added = kWh charged ÷ consumption × 100
• Cost per kilometre = total price ÷ kilometres added

Level up: is it cheaper or dearer than petrol for the same distance? Why is fast charging usually more expensive than charging at home? These are real numbers from right in front of them, which no worksheet can match.

2. How many times do the wheels turn?

A car wheel covers roughly two metres per turn. How many turns until you arrive? Everyone writes down a guess first. Then read the distance off the navigation and calculate: turns ≈ kilometres × 1,000 ÷ 2. That’s about 50,000 turns per 100 km, which usually earns a “No way!”.

Follow-up: would a bicycle wheel turn more times or fewer over the same distance?

3. The talk-only designer

Your child is the engineer, you’re the fussy client. The brief: using only things already in the car, design a way to pass a snack from the back seat to the front. No hands allowed, only words. After each version, add a constraint: no more than two objects, it has to go round a corner, it mustn’t touch the driver. There’s no right answer, and 11-year-olds love proving the client wrong.

4. True or false, with a reason

Read a statement, get a verdict and a reason. The reason is what scores.

• On the Moon, a hammer and a feather dropped together land at the same time. True. Astronaut David Scott did exactly this during Apollo 15 in 1971. With no air, there’s no air resistance to slow the feather.
• Heavy things always fall faster. False. Without air resistance they fall at the same rate; on Earth, air makes the difference.
• The mist on the inside of the window comes from inside the car. True. Warm, moist air from our breath condenses on the cold glass.

5. Find the fake coin

Nine identical coins, one slightly lighter. You have a balance and can use it only twice. How do you find the light one?

Answer: split them into three groups of three. Weigh two groups. If they balance, the light coin is in the third group; if not, it’s in the higher side. Then take two coins from that group and weigh them the same way. Bonus: with 27 coins you need only three weighings.

6. Sound map

Everyone closes their eyes for one minute and counts the different sounds they hear, then says where each came from. Two ears hear a sound at slightly different times and loudness, which is how the brain works out direction. Ask: was it harder to tell left from right, or front from back? Front and back is usually harder.

Outside the car (only away from traffic and cables)

7. The slow-fall helicopter

Tear a strip from a receipt, about two fingers wide. Tear down the middle of the top half, fold one flap forward and one back, and fold the bottom up twice for weight. Drop it next to a crumpled ball of paper. The winner is whichever lands last. The angled blades turn the rushing air into spin, and spinning blades catch more air, so it falls slowly, like a sycamore seed.

8. One-finger reaction test

Hold a ruler at the top; your child waits with finger and thumb open at the zero mark. Drop it without warning. Where they catch it tells you their reaction time. There’s a conversion table in our household science challenges.

Printable version

Our free charging-stop booklet has the helicopter and a paper bridge as hand-drawn sheets, and the talking games come as a tear-in-half card: questions for the back seat, answers for the front. Get tonight’s game.