Creating a Children’s Travel Journal and Keepsake

A couple of days before we left for Germany, I stumbled upon an online article (I wish I could find it!) that discussed the “ancient” art of scrapbooking, and how most kids have no idea what this is. The author discussed how she’d recently taught her fifth grader about scrapbooking by creating a few pages with her about a recent family vacation, and it hit me that I could totally do something like this with my preschooler!

Hadley was two months shy of five years old during our trip to Europe, and though I know (hope?) she’ll have a few quick memories, I doubt she’ll remember much. I knew creating a scrapbook-type travel journal of our trip would not only be a great keepsake for her to look back on one day, but it would also be a great activity that she and I could do together.

Creating a Children’s Travel Journal

So the day before our trip, I picked up a little $8 notebook at Target that was small enough to fit in her carry-on but that was big enough to display tickets, pictures, etc. from our trip.

I put the notebook, some scotch tape, and a few crayons/markers in a gallon-sized ziplock bag to store in her carry-on.

The plan was to collect things throughout our vacation, put them inside the gallon-sized bag, and then sit down together at the end of each day to create a page within the travel journal about our day. I think we realistically only did this three nights, so we had some catching up to do on our long flight home. 🙂

She worked on taping things down and a whole lot of writing! We talked about each day of our trip, thought about the highlights that she wanted to write down, and then I spelled words for her to write.

She took her travel journal to school the very first day that we were back, and her teachers said they loved looking through it with her! She’s shown it to all of our family and friends who have come over, too. She’s very proud of it!

For now, I have it tucked safely on the top rack of her closet so that Sadie doesn’t mistake it for a regular ole’ notebook that she can have her way with. 🙂

If Hadley is interested, I hope to make more of these travel notebooks with her (and Sadie too in a couple of years). We are shooting to continue going on a family vacation once a year, so the idea of her having a whole collection of these when she’s grown makes me kind of giddy! I’ll probably enjoy looking back at them more than anybody. 😉

You know what’s missing from this book though? Some pictures! It just hit me while I was writing this post that I should let Hadley pick out some pictures to develop and add to this book. I think we’ll do that!

Anyway, just wanted to share this fun idea that seemed to serve multiple purposes:

• Hadley and I were able to do an activity together, just the two of us.
• She worked on her writing and spelling.
• She created a special keepsake to always have and look back on.

Have an upcoming vacation? Here are some super cute travel journals you can snag today on Amazon.

 

Let’s chat!

Were you ever into scrapbooking? How do you document and remember family vacations?

More: What is was really like traveling abroad with our kids and our very first family vacation to San Diego