You’ve read the post Keeping a Kid’s Travel Journal and are intrigued with the idea.  Now you’d like to know more about actually creating a kid’s travel journal.  Below are listed some tips and ideas to get you started helping your child keep a travel journal:

• The greater part of the travel journal will consist of the diary.  Writing down impressions and opinions of sights seen and experienced will be important to the body of the journal.  Encourage the child to write a little something about each day that they feel they would like to remember from their vacation. Perhaps there was someone famous who lived in the town or an historical event that happened there.  Even keeping a record of prices paid for a candy bar or a gallon of gas will be fun to read about in later years. If nothing else, they can always mention the weather.
• Take plenty of photos and leave room for your favorites in your travel journal. If the child is old enough to take photos, but doesn’t have digital camera, buy a disposable one that can be used on the trip.
• Have them draw their own original maps and use hand drawn pictures of local places of interest.  If they are not inclined to drawing, use stars or stickers to mark important stops or events that took place that day.
• Stop at local tourist information booths to look for flyers and brochures that can be used in creating a kid’s travel journal.  They can be cut up and used as scrap booking items or if the book is large enough, paste some envelopes onto the pages to hold the entire brochure. Also look for colorful maps that may be useful for cutting up and posting into the journal.
• Check out the local plants in the area.  Perhaps you can find some great wildflowers or ferns to press and put into the journals.
• Be sure and keep admission stubs and flyers to events and activities you have attended to glue in your journal.
• Go to gift shops and find postcards of the area you may want to glue in your journal.

I know a family who has a great tradition of journaling.  Everyone is required to keep a journal during their vacation.  Once they return home, all journals are collected and put on a special shelf.  They now have over 15 years of family journals assembled.  Oftentimes during holidays or family get-togethers a journal is randomly selected and this is a great way to remember fun family vacations and memories of the past. It’s also great fun to see the thought processes of the kids when they were 5 or 10 years of age.

This is a great family tradition to start.  As your children grow you may find when they have children they will continue on with this practice.  Love of journaling, what a great gift to give your children!