I had so much fun putting together Trip Journal’s for the children!
If you have any summer trips coming up, this is a fun and easy way give them something to do during the drive, as well as provide a nice keepsake of the trip!
I started with downloading and printing out the Trip Journal template from Simply Charlotte Mason. A big THANK YOU to Elizabeth for sending me over there the other day. I had been planning on making a notebook for the trip, but finding this trip journal really simplified the process for me!
The Trip Journal includes the following sections:
- The Route We Took: For this section, I printed out various State Coloring Pages online for each state that we will be visiting. I also included a few pages from this great coloring book.
- Neighbors We Saw: In this section I included an Outline Map of the United States. As the children see license plates, or meet people, from various states they can color in the correct state on the map! This will be great reinforcement, since we have been studying States & Capitals this year.
- My Trip Journal: I printed out Geography Notebooking Pages from here and here, and then added them to the journal.
- My Trip Budget: I only included this section in Captain’s journal. Rather than give Captain a reward with his accumulated “Reward Certificates”, his tutor cashed them in for a bit of spending money! He is SO excited! He will report back to her after the trip on how it was spent. 🙂
- The Trip in Pictures: Here I inserted a number of blank pages to add pictures to when we get back, in addition to little mementos from the trip!
To finish it off I printed a cover page in Word titled “My Trip Journal” on card stock, and let the kids color/decorate it however they wanted. I then took the books to Staples to be spiral bound. “That was easy!” An easy way to lose two hours of precious packing time as I waited for them to unjam the pages from their machine!! (I nearly died when I walked back in and saw one employee yanking on the machine, and the other yanking on all my hard work! Captain’s Trip Journal!) In the end they turned out nice though, the binding looks great, and the kids can’t wait to get started on them…
“Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So get on your way!”- Dr. Suess
and Corpus Christi Sunday!
We downloaded that same one last year when we went to see my mom in Eastern Oregon! It was a lot of fun and kept them buys on that long drive!
These look awesome. What a great idea! I especially love how you bound them so professionally — what wonderful keepsakes these will be.
Prayers for a safe and delightful trip, especially for the new family priest, and your little First Communicant! God bless you — looking forward to your safe return!
Thank you Amy & Eileen! The kids are just LOVING the books!!
God Bless!
This is great! Thank you so much for the geography links. I’m going to save this for next year.
I had a fun time following your journey even though it's been a while since you actually hit the road. I live south of Kearney . . . and was a bit disappointed to realize that your husband is out of brothers so you probably won't head this way again. :>) What a wonderful, blessed time for your family, though! These journals are a great idea, and I linked to them on my weekly roundup here. Thanks so much!