Make Your Own Kid’s Travel Journal

Let’s kick this off with me admitting I am no do it yourself person. Honestly I can only write and you can judge for yourself how well, while I basically suck at all the other artsy stuff. I manged to get through life without knowing how to paint, sculpt or even sew, yet becoming a Mom apparently made me think I have certain super powers. Or at least my kids seem to think it and I just go along with it. Sometimes I push too hard and think I am kind of invincible and forget that I have no other skill than this scribbling I do. Not even my handwriting is nice, if I had to depend on it, I bet only my parents would still try to read my blog. No, hubby wouldn’t, he’s the one to point out my lack of talents for singing and dancing. But luckily I have my kids who still believe I can do no wrong. And I’d like to have them boosting my ego for just a little while so I do my best to prove them right.

One of those ways is encouraging them to create, with my help of course. Because I on the other hand am convinced my kids are almost geniuses in everything. Talk about objectivity, yeah, I have none. If Stela wants to paint, it almost makes me search the nearest chapel or talk to the gallery owners. So, I now have to think of stuff to do, buy the necessary equipment and then actually try and do it. Luckily there are books to give me ideas, though some of them go overboard with the stuff they expect us to do and then my kid turns to me with wide eyes and great expectations and again I’ve go something to prove. Then there are stores, which I have managed to avoid in a big way, stores that screamed you are just not good at this, keep away. Now, I visit them to buy all the things we might need. The first few times I didn’t know half of the stuff I was looking for, other times I almost bought the professional brushes and paint. Thankfully the shopkeeper took one look at me and directed me to a less talented part of the store. Yes, very segregative, but she did save me some money. And then comes taking it all home and sitting with my daughter and trying to convince her to follow the instructions. But the kid always has her own ideas. Good, most of the time, so I try to let her just have her way, well who am I to know any better, right.

Thus we’ve created decorations for Christmas, something for Easter and now comes the long dry period of basically nothing till Christmas again. So, to keep the ball rolling and to get her even more excited about our trip I had her create her own travel journal. She needs no encouragement when it comes to packing the bags and going anywhere, but this time around I also wanted her to appreciate our trip, be more attentive and know what is going on, I wanted her to remember at least some of the stuff as well as have her first journal.

This time around I was very realistic, she cannot yet write, she let’s be honest is no next Renoir, yet, she is however more like a less understood but very talented Picasso, so too much drawing was out of the question. What I did have her do is give her a notebook and some stickers, a pair of scissors (to be used under my supervision only) and glue. We had stickers for the letters of the alphabet for the names that had to be written. I printed out the map of the trip and we glued it on the first page, the other stickers were then used to mark all the locations we managed to visit and she got to chose what sticker goes where according to the fact if she liked the place or not really. It was easy, she basically liked it all. She drew a flag of the Czech Republic and now she knows it for life I believe and lastly before the trip we glued a small envelope inside to store all the entrance tickets and other small papers that we wanted to keep as a souvenir. On the trip, the first thing we did was look for tourist information offices, so we got enough of the leaflets and every evening we’d cut out  things we saw and glue them into the notebook.

It was really so much fun and it didn’t require any special knowledge, just some thought. Both of us enjoyed it, she got to create, have a lasting memory of our trip and I got to spend time with her and honestly it made me enjoy this trip even more.

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2 thoughts on “Make Your Own Kid’s Travel Journal

  1. This this great. Since my son has started school this year I have thought we might try doing a travel diary for this years holiday.
    I love the suggestions of colouring the flag and gluing in maps – a great way for kids to learn.

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