An "Adventure Journal," what is it? What's it for? Who is it for?
Glad you asked!
In a nutshell, My Adventure Journal is designed to be a printable coloring book style journal; designed for younger writers to easily record:
WHERE they go,
WHEN they visit, and
WHAT they see.
Then they can write their thoughts, make a drawing, and even add a sticker or two (or more?) and/or photo; allowing them to remember experiences in their own words. Plus, each page's design is created in a black and white line design, similar to a coloring book, so they can all be unique! Each time they use the same page, it can be a different color and design.
My Adventure Journal is designed to be great for:
Homeschoolers,
Charter schools,
Families that love to travel, and
Teaching kids the wonderful value of writing and journaling.
Well, that's cool, but how'd you come up with this thing?
The concept behind the Adventure Journal began as a way for my little ones - who were just learning to read and write, already loved to draw and color, and also loved to collect stickers - to remember our [insert announcer voice here]...
"Summer Vacation RV US World Tour"
(echo, echo, echo...)
(also, the title gets longer each time, and makes less sense as it goes)
Anyway, we spent over a month on the road, driving across the country in a new-to-us RV, seeing many sights, visiting a bunch of friends, and collecting so many memories. But we parents did NOT want to spend hundreds of dollars on cheesy knicks knacks, tchotchkes, or stuffies, or even a bajillion t-shirts. Who has room for all that in an RV anyway? And as homeschool / charter school parents, how could we make the trip also educational, and not forget everything we just learned that year?
Ta-da! The idea was born.
Each page would have a spot for:
Location
Name
Date
Sticker(s)
A Photo or Picture
A place to answer "What did you do or see?" as well as "What was your favorite?"
For each stop along the trip, our little ones could do all their adventuring, then sit down for a few minutes as we set up for the evening, and write and/or color their way through a journal page. Soon the benefits were obvious:
- They practiced their writing skills and coloring skills.
- They learned to spell weird new words, and collected stickers from each stop for their page.
- They sat and drew a picture on each page, and colored around what they wrote to make it cool.
- They reflected back on previous pages and saw how far they'd traveled each day.
- They learned about journaling one's thoughts and activities to reflect on.
- They learned math, science, history, English, social skills, exercise, and more depending on the stop of the day.
- We saved lots of money on new stuffies.
- We saw our kids enjoy learning in new places.
- We found we could use these sort of experiences during the school year for field trips, and turn in completed Adventure Pages for credit in an area(s) of study.
Ok sure, that's great and all that you saved cash and found some positives, but what did the kids think?
I mean, that's a great question right? Did they find it interesting and engaging? Probably the best answer to that was my daughter, after working on a page for a bit, stopping what she was coloring and then looking me straight in the eye...
"Daddy... I don't like these pages." a pause... maybe too long a pause... and Daddy's heart starts sinking a little, and then a sudden excited "I LOVE them!" Then without another word, she went back to working on her drawing for a while.
Yeah, that works for me! Hope your kids love them just as much.
