Create a children’s travel journal

Travelling with children is always a nightmare in popular imagination. Hours filled with sibling arguments and cries of ‘are we there yet?’. It doesn’t have to be that way. Done well, holidays are the times that our children will remember with warmth and nostalgia. They are times of adventure and togetherness. Creating a journal is a wonderful way to preserve the memories, and to create a keepsake to treasure.

There doesn’t have to be anything formal about creating a travel journal. Encourage your children to collect mementos along the way – anything from a photograph to a beautiful leaf. Jotted thoughts, sketches and doodles are easy ways to capture feelings and reflections, while maps, tickets and postcards give a sense of time and place.

Keeping a journal is not just about recording what has happened; it can help give shape to what is yet to come. Visiting churches and monuments, or trekking through the bush can go from boring to an adventure when there are treasures to collect. It can also give children a sense of power, of having some say over the shape of the journey. Involve them in your plans, let them help select a range of activities and watch the travel blues evaporate.

Trip tips

• Show and tell: let your children be your guides, full of curiosity and instinct.
• Plan ahead: go equipped with a book each, scissors, sticky-tape, labels and a special bag.

 

Styling: Aimee Jones. Photography: Scott Hawkins. Background painted in Porter’s Paints lemon zest.