When my children were small, keeping them entertained and amused while we were running errands, going to appointments or even visiting relatives was a huge challenge. As most of you know, bored kids cause trouble. The more bored they get, the crankier they get and soon, everyone is crabby and stressed and the outing is a bust. I stumbled across journals as one way to keep kids entertained and focused when were out and about.
We made a big fuss over our “journals.” For my kids, since many of the adults in their lives (mom, grandparents, etc.) kept both writing and art journals, it was something very grown up and creative they could do. I would purchase the hard-bound journal books with the blank, art-type pages–not terribly expensive, but nice ones just the same. You can get them in a variety of sizes, depending on what you and your child like and they have enough pages to keep a child busy for quite some time.
Each child then had a zipper pouch bag of colored pencils or fun art pens to go with the journal. When we’d head out for a day of running errands, or off to the grocery store or doctor’s office, the journals came along. From the time they were preschoolers, the kids were encouraged to write and draw about what they saw, thought and heard on our grand adventures. It gave them a chance to develop their artistic and reporting temperament. One of their grandmothers also kept an artist’s and observing journal and when they would get together, they would all share what they had drawn and written about in their journals. Not only did the activity keep them too busy to get into too much trouble, but they developed great observational skills and an eye for the “story” in the every day.
Now, my kids still keep journals and diaries, but they are much more private. We still have the fine colored pencils and drawing pens and I know for a fact that my middle daughter still makes observational drawings of her world. What’s fun is to go back and look at those early years journals–while they were staying out of trouble, they also did a fine job of recording our lives. One five-year-old’s drawing can take us back to a specific trip to the doctor or day of running mundane errands.
See Also: The Lasting Power of Play Dough and The Therapeutic Power of Coloring Books