If you’re looking for a great kids travel journal for your caravanning, camping or road trips, the Caravanning With Kids one is very popular in Australia.
Taking a Kids Travel Journal with you on regular holidays or a big trip is a great keepsake for the kids. Journals provide an opportunity for kids to keep up with their writing, plus log their adventures, memories and people they meet along the way.
Having a personal Travel Journal also gives kids a space to be creative with drawing, sticking in ‘treasures’ they find and making collages of brochures and entry tickets of places they’ve visited. Above all, travelling with a Kids Journal offers them somewhere to express themselves emotionally in a safe space.
In this Caravanning With Kids Travel Journal review you will get to have a peek at what the pages look like and see exactly what’s included in the travel journal. I’ll also share some extra benefits of packing a kids travel journal.
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Caravanning With Kids Travel Journal – What’s Included?
The Caravanning With Kids Travel Journal opens with a ‘welcome page.’ Here it explains what’s included and how to get the most out of the travel diary.
The journal is wire-bound with a plastic sleeve cover to protect the journal.
Checklist
Kids love a good checklist (and so do many of us adults)!
At the beginning of the travel journal you’ll find a great Packing Checklist complete with little pictures to help the kids quickly identify what the item is. It’s excellent even for the littlies that can’t yet read independently.
This page is printed on whiteboard card, so that the kids can rub out their ticks after each road trip or holiday and then reuse the checklist again next time.
Address Book
On the flip-side of the packing list is an Address Book page. This one is also printed on whiteboard card, so that it can be reused.
There are eight individual boxes, which each include Name, Address, Email and Phone.
Uses for the Address Book:
- Write down the names & addresses of people to send postcards or letters to while on holidays;
- Jot down email addresses of people to email back at home;
- Record the details of new friends made along the way.
In this modern age of many travelling families having social media accounts, this can be a good spot to record the ‘travelling names’ of the different kids you meet as you travel.
Journal/ Diary Pages
Within the journal you’ll find 92 pages where the kids can document what they get up to each day. Each page is a template, which can be filled in however they wish.
There are two questions to answer: “What day is it today?” and “Where are we?”
In the top right-hand corner is a picture of a calendar page, where the kids can circle which day of the month it is, then fill out the Month and Year.
Provided on each journal page are six rows, which are lined to help out those who are learning and practicing their letters. This is where the kids can write whatever they wish about things that they have experienced that day.
At the bottom of the page is an image box. This provides a really great space for kids to draw a picture, stick on a photo or even cut up a brochure to accompany their writing.
Indii always liked filling out the journal pages, but Dom wasn’t so into the journaling. He preferred to answer the question and just do a few dot points. A journal should always be about free expression.
What’s on Each Travel Journal Page:
- ‘What is the Day Today?’
- ‘Where Are We?’
- Calendar with Month & Year
- 6 lined rows for writing
- Image box for photo, drawing or brochure cut-outs
- Total of 92 pages
Activity Sheets
At the back of the book are a range of 6 activity sheets, including colouring-in, games and road trip songs. You can go to the Caravanning With Kids website and print off as many of their FREE Printables as you like to add to your Kids Travel Journal pack.
These activity sheets are great road trip activities for the car (provided they don’t get car sick)!
- Colouring-in sheets
- Find-A-Words
- Battleships
- Squares
- Mazes
- Sing-along Songs
Kids Travel Journal – Benefits
Creative Expression
Not only is keeping a travel journal fun for many kids, it’s also a great way for them to creatively express themselves. Giving the kids some quiet down time in the afternoon (if their attention span permits) can be a great way for them to reflect on the things that they’re really liked/ disliked about the day.
For kids who like to be creative, the journal gives them the space to draw, write, stick in special treasures and cut & paste brochures of places they’ve visited.
Some days they may just be feeling a bit sad or crappy, just like us adults can feel sometimes. Having a personal travel journal offers kids a place to get those big emotions out in a healthy way.
Educational
Often as parents, we worry about our kids education and writing skills falling behind if we take them out of school for travel. This is where a good kids travel journal can come in handy.
The pre-made template, which makes up the Caravanning With Kids travel journal pages, provides excellent prompts to get the kids thinking. First, starting off with the day of the week, then writing down exactly where they are in Australia. The next prompt is to circle the date on the calendar, then fill out the Month and Year. This is great ‘date’ practice for the kids, as well as learning how to read a calendar for the younger ones.
When it comes to the writing lines, some kids like to write in sentences, while others prefer to do dot-point lists. There is no right or wrong, as long as they’re having a go at jotting down some highlights (or lowlights) of the day.
Journaling comes in many forms: poetry, story telling, list writing, sketching and doodling, colouring, collage pieces. The kids are really only limited to their imagination.
Caravan Packing List
Never forget a thing with the ULTIMATE Caravan Packing List!
- Pre-filled with 600+ items
- 17 categories
- ‘Weight’ column (to organise payload)
- PRINTABLE – fully customisable
- DIGITAL – completely interactive
- Download once, use it over-and-over
Memorable Keepsake
Taking that travel journal with them as they move through life will forever take them back to those memories and moments in time. In this world filled with selfies, we often forget the value of creating something by hand that we can keep for years to come.
The travel journal also gives the kids something that they can take home to show the grandparents, teachers, friends and classmates after an exciting trip. They can use it for Show & Tell in the classroom to help tell the story of their journey.
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Interesting gift idea for family who travels alot! I love the checklist too, teaches kids to take responsibility, and pack their own things! This is kinda like an offline Instagram, I wonder if there’s an adult version of this =p
The journal is great for kids having a sense of responsibility. I’m sure there’s an adult travel journal version somewhere out there.
This is such a cute idea! I would have loved this as a kid. I don’t have any kids myself, but one day if I do, this indefinitely something I’d look into getting for them!
Oh my goodness. This kid’s travel journal is so cute and creative. I love stuff like this and actually would want an adult version of this. Keeping a written journal is so rare these days. We need to bring this back…and lets bring back pen pals too 🙂
Oh yes, I remember having a pen pal in school, it was so much fun. Journalling really does seem to be a dying art with the technological age, such a shame.
This is such a great idea! It introduces kids a sense of responsibility and excitement that comes with travelling. I would have loved this when I was a kid. I was a regular diary keeper, and would spend pages writing about my adventures.
I was also a regular diary keeper and would have loved to fill this out each day. But I’ve definitely noticed that like anything, it depends on the child. My son hated doing it, while my daughter enjoyed it a lot more.
This kids travel journal looks excellent. I like how it is neatly organized. It is similar to what we use to do with my kids many years ago but much more professional.
These kids travel journals are very organised and easy for the kids to navigate and fill in. Journals are one of those things that are proving to stand the test of time!