It was a random Saturday afternoon, somewhere between 12 and 1pm, at our neighbourhood kopitiam.
For international readers — a kopitiam is a traditional Singaporean coffee shop. Open air, ceiling fans doing their best, rows of hawker stalls selling everything from chicken rice to laksa. Loud, crowded, and on a hot Saturday afternoon, absolutely no mercy from the humidity. Think hawker centres — but slightly pricier, because hawker centres are government-subsidised while kopitiams are privately owned. Same food, same noise, same ceiling fans. Just a different landlord.
We were queuing for char kway teow. Ariel’s current favourite — flat rice noodles, cockles, egg, wok hei smoke, and roughly a week’s worth of calories in one plate. Absolutely fattening. Absolutely worth it.
Yes, I am a PE teacher. No, that does not mean we eat clean every weekend. Char kway teow is non-negotiable in this household and I will not be taking questions at this time.
As usual, the queue was long. The air was thick. I had Julian and Ariel and their scooters with me. Whilst sitting and waiting for our food, we played, without screens.
The reality of waiting with kids
You don’t always have a bag full of backup entertainment. Sometimes you stepped out just to buy lunch and the kids insisted on following and now here you are, stuck in a queue with nothing but time and a slowly melting parent.
The phone is the easy answer.
But over the years I’ve found a handful of games that work almost anywhere — no setup, nothing to carry, nothing to lose under the table. Just you and your kids and whatever’s around you.
These are those games.
List of 5 No Waiting Games for Kids
Best for: Ages 4 and up
Players: 2 or more
Play time: As long as you need
Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆
Our rating: 4/5 — reliable, zero prep, works anywhere
How it works: One person picks something visible and says “I spy with my little eye, something…” then gives a colour, shape, or letter clue. Everyone else guesses.
Make it colour-based for younger kids, letter-based for older ones. Ariel goes for colour every time. Elliot tries to pick things that are technically visible but basically impossible to spot, because he is eight and cannot help himself.
Parent tip: If the queue is long, switch to “I spy something that starts with the letter…” — it runs longer and keeps Elliot from making it too easy for himself.
Best for: Ages 4 and up
Players: 2 or more
Play time: 5–10 minutes
Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆
Our rating: 4.5/5 — high engagement, gets louder as it goes
How it works: Set a simple pattern together — clap, slap knees, clap, high five. Repeat it, then speed it up each round. Eventually someone breaks the pattern, everyone laughs, and the kids start inventing their own combinations.
The invented combinations phase is where it gets genuinely chaotic. Julian’s version had a spin move in it by round three. We were in a kopitiam queue. People were looking.
Parent tip: Let them invent the patterns — that’s when they stop thinking about how long the queue is.
Best for: Ages 4 and up
Players: 1 or more
Play time: Flexible
Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆
Our rating: 4/5 — works especially well in busy environments
How it works: Give them a mission. “Find five people wearing black.” “Count how many red vehicles pass.” “Spot three signs with numbers on them.” They look outward, stay occupied, and stop asking for screens every twenty seconds. Once when I was driving along the expressway, my helper kept them occupied by asking them to spot uncles wearing red.
Works brilliantly in a kopitiam because there is genuinely a lot to observe — stall signs, people, food colours, ceiling fans, that one uncle who has been sitting with the same kopi for forty-five minutes.
Parent tip: Make the missions slightly competitive between siblings — first one to spot three things wins. Supervise their scoring. Eg: Elliot will find loopholes.
Best for: Ages 5 and up
Players: 2 or more
Play time: Endless if you let it
Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆
Our rating: 5/5 — best queue game we have
How it works: Ask a would you rather question. Everyone answers and explains why. Then the next person asks one.
Start reasonable. It will not stay reasonable.
“Would you rather fly or be invisible?” becomes “would you rather eat only char kway teow forever or never eat char kway teow again” — at which point Ariel, who we were literally queuing for char kway teow for, went very quiet and genuinely had to think about it.
“Would you rather fight one giant duck or twenty tiny ducks?” is a question Julian asked that I am still thinking about.
Parent tip: The more nonsense the question, the longer they stay engaged. Let it get weird. Weird is good.
Best for: Ages 4 and up
Players: 2–5
Play time: 5–15 minutes
Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆
Our rating: 4/5 — surprisingly addictive
How it works: Everyone hides one hand behind their back. Count together — “1, 2, 3!” — then everyone shows their fingers at the same time, between zero and five. Before revealing, each person shouts their guess for the total number of fingers across all players. Closest guess wins the round.
Simple enough for Ariel. Has just enough mental arithmetic to keep Elliot engaged. Julian will guess the same number every single round with complete confidence regardless of outcomes.
Parent tip: This one works well when you’re almost at the front of the queue and need one last five minutes. Short rounds, fast reset, easy to stop mid-game when the food arrives.
What I still bring just in case
Honestly — I usually have one small book in my bag. Just in case.
But I’ve stopped feeling like I need to fill every waiting moment with structured entertainment. A queue, a few minutes outside a clinic, sitting at the table while food is being prepared — these are actually decent pockets of time for just talking, observing, being a bit bored together.
Kids who learn to wait without a screen in their face tend to be better at it over time. I see this as a PE teacher too — the kids who can handle downtime without needing constant stimulation are generally the more resilient ones.
That said, Would You Rather about giant ducks is always available. No preparation required.
Why these small moments add up
Most of parenting doesn’t happen during the planned parts. It happens in the in-between — the queue, the five-minute walk, the waiting for food to arrive.
These games don’t replace proper family time. They just make the gaps a little less about screens and a little more about each other.
And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get a question about giant ducks that you’re still thinking about three days later.
The char kway teow was worth the wait, by the way. It always is.
(An image from google maps – Ahh I will replace this with Ariel’s actual serving in future)
More no-prep ideas for real life: