Creating a Family Travel Guide

When Michael and I were in college we spent many weekends at the Red River Gorge, and even after we got married we still went camping pretty regularly.  But once we started having kids camping got a bit complicated, and we started staying in cabins and not tent camping as much as we used to "back in the day".  Now that the kids are getting older we've decided it's time to start tent camping again.  Last Fall we decided that we are going to take the kids to our favorite place to camp, the Red River Gorge at least once a year for a camping trip.  Read all about our first camping trip with all four kids in this post.

The Gorge is breathtakingly beautiful, and there are more paths, trails, and sites to see than one can count.  We have several trail guides for the Red River Gorge that we use when we go camping and hiking, but we decided to make our own family Guide Book for the Red River Gorge and Natural Bridge area for our future trips.  This book is something that we can continue to add to over the years, and take with us each year to remember the paths we hiked, the places we camped, and the sites we saw.  I'm hoping this book will end up being a family treasure as we add to it each year.

Here's a bit more about how we made our book:
I bought a simple (large) journal at Michael's Craft store, and printed out many pictures from our trips, along with labels to label each hike/page.  Then we decided how to organize the book.  We have sections for hikes we take, places we stay, and what we ate.  I started each page with a title and a few pictures, then we all write notes about the hike.  It was interesting to see what the kids had to say about our trip.  And I can't wait to add to this each year and see how it evolves as the kids get older!

Here are some pictures of our Red River Gorge Travel Guide:
**Click on photos to see larger versions of them.

For some of the pages I copied text from our official trail guide books, just so we could remember exactly which trail we took on each trip. 

Do you have a place your family likes to travel to on a regular basis?  Or perhaps you take a different road trip or vacation each year?  You should consider making a family travel guide with your kids, it's a great learning experience!

And if you are looking for things to cook on your camping trip see this Menu Planning Post

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Sticker Craft

Are you looking for a simple craft for the munchkins to work on to strengthen letter recognition and practice fine motor skills?  How about making a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree for them to decorate with letters?  Before you do this craft though, you simply must read the book together with your child (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert).  It's a fun book to help kids start to recognize their letters.  After you've read the book you just need some colored paper and ABC stickers to make a educationally fun craft for young ones!  This project is best for kids aged 2-5, and not only will it help with letter recognition, but it's great for fine motor skills too, because removing the stickers from the paper is not easy...they really have to focus and use those little fingers with finesse!  This is a great at-home project, or a project for an early childhood classroom.  Another great Chicka Chicka Boom Boom activity is the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Magnet Letter Activity.

How to make Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Trees ::
 
First, gather your materials: black or white paper, brown paper, scissors, glue stick and ABC stickers (I always use my leftover scrapbooking stickers to give them some variety)

Using the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book as a guide cut out brown and green paper to make a coconut tree (it's very easy...and the toddlers didn't care about imperfections in my tree-designing skills).  Glue the trees to the black (or white) background paper.

Then give the children stickers and let them go!  While they worked I pointed out letters, demonstrated the sounds the letters made, and helped peel stickers as needed.  The boys (age 3) worked on this almost independently.  Afterwards we read the book again (and again...and again).

Gingerbread Man Story Starters

When I was teaching one of my areas of focus was children's literature.  I did everything I could to bring the stories to life for the kids, and to create activities for them to do in the classroom that expanded upon the stories we read.  After I left my job as a preschool teacher to stay at home with the munchkins I spent a few semesters teaching for the Super Saturday program in Cincinnati.  My class was called "Beyond Books" and each week I would read several books to the children (ages 4-7) and then we would do some fun hands-on activities based on the themes of the stories we had read.  I sometimes thought that I had as much fun developing the activities and watching the children use their imaginations as they did in actually working on the activities.  It was a super fun experience for me, and I want to share some of the fun activities I did with the students here on the blog.  

Gingerbread Man Story Starters : 

We did a whole unit on baking, and I read several versions of this popular fairy tale, and then gave the students the paper seen in the pictures below.  This would be simple to make on your computer!

The directions were pretty straightforward.  I asked the students to create their own page from the Gingerbread Man story.  Here are a few of the finished products:

 The Dragon

 The Pumpkin

The Fish

I love getting children to interpret stories and give their spin on things.  When everyone finished their papers we put them together and read it as if it were a book.  The kids loved it and were cracking up at all the responses.  This project does not need to be done in a classroom, you could do this at home with your children!

**Disclosure :: I always like to give credit where credit is due, but I have been using this form for years and years as a teacher, and I cannot remember if it is something I created on the computer or if I found it in a teaching resource, or if it was given to me by another teacher.  My mind isn't what it used to be ;)  Either way, it's an awesome writing prompt for children, you should try it!

Alphabet Books Revisited

Are you looking for something fun & educational to do with your young ones?  Try making an ABC book with them!  Read all about it in this post I wrote about making your own alphabet book.  My kids had so much fun creating their books.  And recently I started teaching in a Saturday program and once again my students enjoyed this project.  I love the unique  & interesting ideas the kids come up with for their alphabet book.  And it's simple (and inexpensive) to put together.  

I'd like to add a few new Alphabet book titles to your reading list as well.  Whenever I do the Alphabet book project we always start by reading a few ABC books, and here are a few of our favorites:

Peanut Butter & Jellyfishes by Brian P. Cleary

A is for Astronaut by Traci Todd

The Turn-Around, Upside Down Alphabet Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst

**look closely at this picture, this book is great because it makes the kids really look at the letter

Picture a Letter by Brad Sneed

I love love love the illustrations in this book!

Have fun with this project!  It's perfect for your preschooler who is just learning the letters, or for your older student who is looking for an interesting way to write & illustrate their own book.  The great things about this activity is that the possibilities are countless.

Beyond Books :: Weather Books & Raindrop Mobile

Yesterday afternoon was dark & stormy, and that kind of weather called for some book reading & crafting.  So first I collected a bunch of books about weather for the kids to read.

The craft I picked was inspired by a Cloud Mobile post I saw on Crafty Crow.  I had trouble printing the images from the post, so I created my own using clip art.  Another option would be to have the kids draw their own clouds and raindrops, but I knew that Sam would be frustrated by this, so I made printables.

For this project you need paper for the cloud & raindrops (or printables), yarn, tape, scissors & crayons (the kids drew designs & wrote words on their clouds and raindrops).

First they cut out the raindrops and clouds (great for fine motor skills)

Then they taped their raindrops to yarn they attached to the cloud.  Ella loved using the masking tape.

These aren't great depictions of their finished products...Max's is backwards, on the front he had written "bam boom rumble" for the thunder, and Sam had drawn lightening on his.  Sam got frustrated with the cutting, so his raindrops are square.  He did not want any help from Mama, he wanted square raindrops. 

This was a great craft, quite uncomplicated, and gave the munchkins something to distract themselves while I made dinner. 

beyond books ~ eric carle books & crafts

One of the kids' favorite authors is Eric Carle.  And I must admit, he's one of my favorites as well!  I love the bright & beautiful illustrations and the sweet & simple stories.  Here's a handful of books written by or illustrated by Eric Carle from our bookshelves:

I gathered them all together (plus a few not pictured...we can't forget my favorite, the very busy spider), and spent the morning reading them to the children.  And even though we read them quite frequently, they are always excited to read them again.  On this particular day I had put together a few fun crafts for the kids to work on after we read the books.

First we made stained glass butterflies (from The Very Hungry Caterpillar).  I cut out a butterfly shape on a bright piece of card stock and stuck the butterfly shape on to contact paper.  Then I gave the children little pieces of tissue paper to decorate their butterfly.

Then I gave each child a butterfly on contact paper to decorate.  One thing to advise the children is to put one piece of tissue on at a time...the sticky contact paper can be difficult to work with.  The kids really enjoyed making their beautiful butterflies.  And while they worked we talked about the life cycle of a butterfly.  This is a great project for kids that need help with fine motor skills! 

Our kitchen window looked so cool when we hung all of the stained glass butterflies!

Another project for this book I found online, but didn't do with them yet are printable Very Hungry Caterpillar books.  I know my kids are going to love these, so I plan on doing them soon!

Next we moved on to a Brown Bear Brown Bear project.  Years ago when I was student teaching I was given this simple little printable, which had pictures of all the animals in the book for the children to color.  I can't find the exact printable online, but here is a site that has printables of each character in the book.  Here's our Brown Bear book:

The kids had a fun time making their books, and when they were finished they read them to each other, it was very cute.  This is a great project for early/pre-readers!

Here's a few more sites with great resources for Brown Bear projects:  The Virtual Vine and AtoZTeacherStuff.

And our final project was to make collages in the style of Eric Carle.  I gave them a pile of paper, scraps from my card-making and scrapbooking.  I tried to give them a whole bunch of different designs, and then asked them to make collages.  Ella made this super cool sea scene:

beyond books ~ summer journals for children

On the last day of school I sent an email to my son's teacher thanking her for a fabulous first year of school for him, and asking what we should focus on over the summer to make sure he is ready for first grade.  I don't want to sit and do flashcards or make him write lines or anything...but I do want to keep him sharp and practice skills he may need extra work on.  As a preschool teacher by trade, I look for fun natural learning experiences for our children.  I fill their summers with all kinds of learning, like nature walks, reading for the summer reading program at the library, learning about math while cooking, and things like that.  Max's teacher had the greatest suggestion for working on his emerging writing skills.  She suggested that he keep a journal over the summer, which would help him work on handwriting, as well as sounding words out and spelling them on his own.  I loved this idea!  And I figured it would be great for all of them.  Ella can work on her creative writing skills, and she loves to write in journals.  Sam is at a very basic level with pre-writing, we're just now working on his name.  But he can draw and "write" whatever he pleases.
So we went to the store and bought four composition notebooks.  Yes, four, I bought one for the baby (ahem, toddler).  He loves to do whatever the big kids are doing, and at 16 months, I think he is ready to be using crayons & pencils more often without chewing on them.

Then I covered the front of the book with white cardstock, and let the kids decorate their covers (I decorated Henry's for him.)

Then we got to work on the journals.  I gave them some writing and drawing supplies: color pencils, crayons and writing pencils.  You could really expand the selection of materials you offer your kids...markers, photographs they have taken, construction paper for making pictures, etc.

For the first page of the book I asked them to do an "About the Author" page.  It was fun watching them draw their self portraits & Ella wrote quite a bit on her page.  Max wrote "I'm the Big Brother" on his, and Sam's self portrait was the best stick person I have seen him draw to date.  So already the journal is helping him hone his skills!

I absolutely loved watching them work on their books, with such intention and seriousness.  I told them that they could use the journals to write about whatever they liked over the summer.  I suggested that they could write about adventures we had, places they wanted to go, or just write stories.  I encouraged them to write whatever they wanted.  I want this to be a totally creative outlet for them, with very little direction.  I might suggest a theme for the day, or ask them all to draw a picture of their favorite place to go or something like that if they are in need of inspiration, but so far they went at it with zeal and enthusiasm and needed no prodding or ideas from mama.  Even little Henry was hard at work for quite a while making lovely green lines. 

The first day we worked on them Ella and Max wrote about a science program that we had attended about Colors & Rainbows.  It was great, because they spent a while discussing what they had learned and put it on paper, without me prompting them at all.  Sam drew weaponry in his journal...because that's what Sam does, he's a jedi at heart.  Here's a sample of Ella's work:

We have only been on summer vacation for two days now, so there has not been much writing yet, but I feel safe in predicting that these journals will be written in all summer long, judging from the excitement shown on the first day.  I want to take the journals with us when we travel, encourage Ella to take pictures to add to hers, and encourage them to add other mementos from their summer...ticket stubs, items found on nature walks, art work from the art class they are taking, etc.  These journals are going to be treasures that remind them of their fun childhood summers someday!  And all the while they are working on these, they will be learning & practicing writing skills.  It's a perfect project for the summer!  That being said, I feel I need to say that I won't be forcing them to write in these journals.  I want them to learn and practice handwriting & spelling, but I don't want it to be a chore.  I want summers to be fun, relaxed and enjoyable.  I just think that with my children's love of books, creating their own book is really going to make them happy.

If you do decide to do this project with your new writers, I have to tell you about this excellent resource that Ella's teacher gave the children this year...it's the Words I Use When I Write booklet.  It's a spelling dictionary for young children, it helps them to find the word they are having trouble spelling, instead of them having to ask how to spell every other word.  This is perfect for Ella because she is very particular and wants to make sure all of her words are spelled correctly.  She can use this booklet to self-correct.

The pages have quite a few words for each letter, and then lines on which the child can add more words that they use when writing. 

It really is a handy resource for new writers! 

I hope that your family enjoys this FUN learning project for the summer, and please leave a comment below if you have some fun learning projects planned for the summer.