In this blog post I talk about ways of continuing to engage and educate children in a fun way while on a family holiday.

A Family Scrapbook

Earlier this year we went to visit Grandma who lives in America for a couple of weeks. I knew I wanted to create something special as a family to record our holiday and our time with the boys Grandma. A scrapbook seemed like an ideal way to do this.

Creating our family scrapbook has been a fun and creative way to reflect on our days together as we collect tickets and maps, add photographs, drawings and write about the moments we have enjoyed. We have continued to add to our scrapbook throughout the summer.

Your scrapbook can include any day you feel you want to remember. Enjoy the time you spend with your family, collect mementos like tickets and take plenty of photographs!

When we are ready to create our entry, we begin by looking at the photographs we have taken. Teddy and Harry both choose their favourite photograph and we print this straight away using an ink free printer. (We use the: KODAK STEP Instant Mobile Photo Printer.) The small printed photographs help the boys to focus on a particular aspect of the day which we can discuss and write about.

Supporting Literacy

For each entry we all write a couple of sentences about our day. This includes Jeffrey and myself as we try to set good examples through modelling.

Creating a scrapbook provides a great opportunity for supporting Teddy and Harry in developing their literacy skills. Importantly, this project provides a concrete purpose for the boys to put pen to paper.

Before we begin writing, we discuss the photographs the boys have chosen and think about sentences we could write to describe what is happening. Once the boys have thought of their sentences, I will write this down either on paper or a dry erase board for them to copy.

Although Teddy is becoming more confident in sounding out words phonetically to spell them, he currently prefers to copy. It is important to provide support suitable for your child and the level they are working at, so children can enjoy writing without feeling worried or pressured about getting it right.

Get Creative!

Once you have all the components ready, your photographs, tickets, maps and writing you can begin to design your pages. You can cut out coloured paper, add stickers and drawings to your pages.

Never wanting to miss an opportunity to expand on a specific area of learning, we sometimes add more information about things which have inspired us. After visiting the planetarium with Grandma, we used stickers in our scrapbook to show the order of the solar system.