Help Your Kids Write a Travel Journal

Create a travel journal, make a doodle book, or write a story about yourself! All you need is paper and scissors to create your own 8-page mini book.CrayolaLLC

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April 26, 2012

Travel journals are fun to populate with facts and details about one’s travels, and then to re-visit after the trip is over. Text accompanied by such items as a New York city museum ticket, a Parisian post card or some Mickey Mouse shaped confetti, will bring back fond memories of a vacation well spent.
Encouraging your children to keep a travel diary allows them to be creative and even organized, not to mention that they’ll have something to share with their school friends upon coming back from the adventure.
The following steps will help you assist your child with this fun project:

1. Before leaving on your family trip, talk to your son or daughter about what you will be planning to see, visit and experience. Make a list with them.
2. Bring along a few (not too many) colorful pens, pencils, stickers, a glue stick and some self adhesive tape. If you bring scissors along, make sure they are packed away in the stow-away luggage. We had ours confiscated at the security check, last time we travelled.
3. Buy a journal at your local arts & crafts shop or a discount store; there’s no need for an expensive leather bound book.
4. Bring a large zip-lock plastic bag, so to toss in loose papers, ribbons, or whatever your child may wan to keep along the way, so these don’t go missing in the suitcases, on the way back home.
5. While on your travel adventure, encourage your child to pick up free pins, stickers, ribbons or even bookmarks to later put into the journal... we picked up a few bookmarks at the Salvador Dalí Museum in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
6. Schedule a time when your child will be writing in the notebook. It doesn’t have to be every day, but it should be constant, so to keep the memories fresh.
7. Journal writing should be a fun activity; there is no need to write endless paragraphs about the travel experience.
8. Take plenty of digital photos. When you get back home, and have access to a printer, your child can select his/her favorite pictures and paste them in the appropriate place, where he/she mentions the travel experience depicted in the photo.
9. Pack a foldable paper map, to mark up and follow from stop to stop with your children and encourage them to explore the map for other cities/towns besides the ones you are going to visit. Then, see if you can glue it in the journal, to re-visit.

Upon returning from your family vacation, encourage your child to share his/her travel journal with grandparents and family members, it will give them a sense of pride and accomplishment, and it will make it easier for them to discuss what they experienced on their journey, when asked “what did you do on your vacation?”

The above article was originally published on The Examiner.com and can be viewed by clicking here.