A Child’s Tools for Travel Fun

Trips down Memory Lane

Memories can be so sweet! Years from now, your family members will love talking about those special trips you took together. Here are a few ways to save those precious moments:

• Cover and decorate shoeboxes before your trip—kids can use markers, crayons, stickers, or yarn. Let them use their imaginations. Whenever you visit tourist areas, shops, and restaurants, the children can collect memorabilia. Such items as brochures, ticket stubs, take-out menus, postcards, leaves, and even a small plastic bag of dirt from the region visited are all perfect to go in the memory box. These boxes should be named and dated for future visits down memory lane.
  
  
• Designate a small blanket, vest, or jacket and make a souvenir patch collection. Purchase patches on each trip, sewing or gluing them on when you return home. Every time you travel, bring out the blanket or jacket to continue the collection. What a treasure—sweet reminders of days gone by.
  
  
• Provide your child (or children) with a blank cassette tape and a small tape recorder. Let them narrate the trip and record observations. Don't forget to sing a few songs together, too!

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Learning about transportation helps build your child's understanding about the world. Here are some activities to spark curiosity about different methods of travel.

• Using old magazines, help your child cut out pictures of cars, trains, boats, airplanes, motorcycles, and bicycles. Together you can glue these down randomly to create a travel collage. As you work on this project, ask your child questions about the various modes of transportation. Which is her favorite? Which would be best to take to Grandma's house?
  
  
• Gather a few toy cars. Pour paints in various colors into shallow containers. Provide a large sheet of paper and let the kids dip the wheels of the cars into the paint and "drive" across the page. Use lots of colors, add sound effects, and you've got "zoom-zoom" art.
  
  
• Give your child two tongue depressors and have him paint them. When dry, glue these, criss-crossed, onto blue construction paper. Using cotton balls or chalk, create billowy clouds. Explain that airplane gliders float in the air without motors—a little different than the jets we take today.
  
  
• Cut out various shapes from construction paper, fabric, or wallpaper scraps (older kids can cut their own shapes). Include plenty of rectangles, circles, triangles, and squares in all sizes. Have your child use these shapes to create a picture of a train, which you can glue to construction paper.