My family's preferred out-of-school project is the trip diary. It can be adapted to any age, any destination and any degree of complexity. Trip diaries also become, upon your return home, the ultimate souvenirs--the kind of stuff you would grab in a fire right after the baby pictures.

THE POSTCARD FLIP-BOOK: AGES THREE TO SEVEN

Simplicity is the key to this young kids' version. Before you leave home, go to a stationery store and buy a standard hole punch and two large silver rings. Each day of the trip, select a postcard and let the child dictate to you (or write, if he's old enough) a favorite memory of the place it depicts. Punch two holes in the top of the postcard and slip it onto the rings. You will return home with a colorful flip-book of the trip--pictures on one side, the child's memories on the other.

As hard as it seems, resist the urge to censor the child's commentary. Although I was somewhat dismayed to discover that my five-year-old son's favorite memory of the San Diego Zoo was the cool green soap in the bathroom dispenser, that's what he said and that's what's on his card.

THE TRIP JOURNAL: AGES EIGHT TO 13

By the time they are writing well on their own, kids can keep a more elaborate diary. For younger writers, it may be enough to keep a journal each night recording where they went and what they did. Older kids might expand the journal into a scrapbook. Leigh, then in the fifth grade, subdivided her California trip into categories and did a report on La Brea Tar Pits for science, read a John Steinbeck novel for literature, and did a paper on women screenwriters for history. In her scrapbook, she traced our path on a map and worked in math by keeping running totals of our distance traveled and money spent. She jazzed up the report by making a cover collage of postcards.

THE VIDEO DIARY: AGES 14 AND UP

Kids this age may find the family video camera offers the best means of creatively preserving a trip. Your teen can record your family's adventures as well as doing a bit of investigative reporting. A friend, also a travel writer, took her 16-year-old on a cruise where he interviewed five crew members: a mechanic, a purser, a cabin steward, the ship's nurse and a youth counselor. The resulting video diary, "A Day in the Life of a Cruise Ship," shows how it takes hundreds of people and dozens of skills to keep this floating city in operation.


Please keep in mind that phone numbers, addresses, and prices are subject to change. Updated July 2005.