One great way to encourage narrations — and even nature study and geography — on a family trip is by giving your child a personal trip journal. Trip journals are inexpensive and easy to make. Just get a three-prong folder and follow the steps below.

Your trip journal can have four sections or five sections, depending on whether you want to include the optional budget section. The steps below outline what to put in each section. Your title page and section pages can be as simple or as elaborate as you desire. Use a design program on your computer or use a felt-tip marker — it’s up to you. For a quick and easy journal, feel free to download our ready-made title and section pages.

Trip Journal Pages

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How to Create a Trip Journal

  1. Make a title page that tells who is going on the trip, the destination, and the dates of the trip. Also make a space for your child/author’s name.
  2. Make a section title page that reads “The Route We Took.” In this first section put a highway map of each state or province you will be traveling through. You can find great condensed highway maps in Kids’ Road Atlas. As you travel, your child can trace your route.
  3. Make a section title page that reads “Neighbors We Saw.” Put an outline map of your country in this second section. Uncle Josh’s Outline Map Book or CD-ROM is a good resource for outline maps. As your child sees license plates from the various states or provinces, he can locate and color them on this map.
  4. Make a section title page that reads “My Trip Journal” and insert lots of lined notebook paper behind it. Use this third section for your child’s narrations of what he observes and does along the trip. You may want to include some plain copy paper for nature sketches. Encourage your child to add an entry to this section each time you stop along the road (for example, at rest stops or meals) or at the end of each day. Make sure he dates the entries and labels them with the locations in which they were written. Ticket stubs, brochures, postcards, and other memorabilia can work well as narration prompts.
  5. If you have older children, you may want to add this optional section called “My Trip Budget.” Just insert a few simple ledger sheets on which your child can keep track of his starting balance, purchases along the way, and a running balance. This section, along with ledger sheets, is included in our free download of ready-made title and section pages above.
  6. Make a section page titled “The Trip in Pictures.” This final section, containing plain copy paper, will be completed after you return home. Take lots of photos on the trip, then let your child select which ones he wants to include in his trip journal. Encourage more narration in the form of captions or short descriptions under the photos.