How to Create a Travel Journal to Boost Your Kids’ Writing Skills

Traveling with your kids is not just a time for fun and excitement. It can also be a great opportunity to help your kids learn in an enjoyable, creative setting, and a great way to develop new skills. With all the new experiences, sights, and sounds that come with a vacation, there are countless chances to mix education with entertainment. Creating a travel journal is one of the best ways to boost your kids’ writing skills while on vacation.

Encouraging them to document their adventures, note down their thoughts as they go, and reflect on the things they do not only helps their creative writing skills, but can be a fun memento of their time abroad. Here’s how you can help your kids in recording your family’s cruising voyages and other adventures.

Choose the Right Journal

A great way to encourage your child to be consistent in writing their travel journal is to get them a notebook that they want to use. Take your child’s age and preference into account when choosing, and get them something that will reflect their personal style. Younger children might like brighter, colorful journals with illustrations or prompts that help them work out what to write, while older kids will be happier with something more sophisticated and mature.

You can always buy a binder and some interesting paper, and encourage your kids to design their own journal. This can be a great way to engage them in the project and gives you the freedom and flexibility to add and remove pages as needed.

Set a Daily Writing Routine

The key to a good travel journal, and helping your kids develop good writing skills and habits, is consistency. It is important for your children to set aside a particular time each day to document their experiences, either of the day just gone or the day before. It is a great way to end a day, for example, helping them wind down and reflect on what they’ve seen and experienced during the day.

It is also worth prompting and reminding your kids to think about how they felt about what they did, not just to write a list of activities.

Provide Writing Prompts and Inspiration

If your kids are new to creative writing they may struggle to get started. It can be daunting to just start writing, and often a (small) helping hand can go a long way. Give them a gentle nudge in the right direction with simple prompts and inspiration, like easy questions or simple prompts, such as ‘describe the most interesting animal you saw today’ or ‘what was the best thing you ate today?’. Once they’ve got started you could get a little more imaginative and really get their creative juices flowing with more complex, esoteric questions.

Encourage Creativity with Art and Photos

Of course, a travel journal doesn’t just have to be about writing. Adding other elements to your kids’ journal can be a wonderful way to get them to express themselves. Think about asking them to add drawings, sketches, and photos, or to collect mementos like transport tickets, postcards, or souvenirs. A collage of various different media not only is a great way to help them remember details of the trip, but creates a more visually appealing end product.

Make It a Collaborative Family Project

One of the most important ways to encourage your kids’ development, in almost any area, is to take a genuine interest in what they are doing and even to join in! Making a travel journal a family project that everyone collaborates in is a fun way to keep them committed to writing and recording their experiences. It is also a lovely way to help the family bond while on vacation.

Reflect and Review

A travel journal should not be something trivial, something that you forget about after the trip is done. Not only is it a lovely souvenir of a great adventure, but going over what your kids have written will help make the experience seem more important and valuable, and reinforce the value of their writing.

Encourage them to use the skills and experience they learn as a result of creating their travel journal to take on other creative writing projects, writing about daily life, school, or future travels. This is a great way to build on the experience and continue the learning process.

Blending education and entertainment is one of the most effective ways parents can encourage useful habits and help their kids develop skills. A travel journal is a simple, easy, and very powerful method of teaching your kids about creative writing and helping them feel more comfortable documenting their experiences and adventures in a fun, creative way. So, the next time you embark on a family adventure, pack a travel journal and watch your child’s creativity and writing skills soar!

Forest Rose

Forest Rose is a God Loving, Blessed Wife, &  Mama to 3 girls. She’s passionate about lifting moms out of the trenches that are discouraged, overwhelmed, or feeling alone or isolated. Her hope is to point them to Christ and equip them to rise up with a newfound hope and joy within, that He alone can provide. Besides blogging, she also loves to create printables!