Maintaining Travel Memories

A selfie is a fun source of memories, but it doesn’t have to be the only one. You can help your children — who are lucky enough to actually travel — maintain some of the memories of what they experience. Among these few simple activities, one or more may enhance their memory banks by assisting them to identify, classify and remember what they have seen and done. It may also facilitate their ability to distinguish between why they liked one thing and not another, which is in itself an important learning experience.

Buy, bring or make a calendar large enough to fill in spaces for morning, afternoon and evening activities. Depending upon their age, they or you can fill in the names of the places visited, the activities they did, the foods they ate or liked or the places they stayed. It’s a good idea to jot down the name and contact of people they met, too. The resulting project will be a journal or future plan for an itinerary.

Encourage your children to save a brochure or ticket from the aquarium, the plane or train, theater or soccer match or a paper menu from the restaurant to make a scrapbook of the trip, or to decorate the calendar journal they made.

Reinterpret the old car trip “find the state-by-state” license plate game with a mobile phone. Encourage kids to take pictures of different cars, architectural styles, foods, doors, sign posts, posters, pop stars, boats … whatever interests them and teach them to make a photo album by category.

Shop for practical items your child will actually use and remember where it was bought by asking for a business card at each shop.

Support your child’s interest in whatever (music, theater, sports, shopping, beach, boating) by arranging to see or do the activity on vacation; encourage them to write either a thank you note about the experience or a post card to a friend who shares the interest and including the date, place and what they saw.

Hopefully, these projects will enhance your time with your kids and their memories of the trip.