The traveler's scrapbook

Sometimes it can be hard to just sit still in a motel room during vacations, and when you are traveling with children you know they will be feeling antsy as they are getting ready to wind down for the evening.

Create a travel scrap book for the children to work on at night during the trip.

Take a small box, such as you would buy for pencils and other school supplies and buy each child a mini scrap book. Fill the school box with things such as glitter, stickers, glue sticks, safety scissors, small colored papers, and other scrapbooking materials. When you go somewhere during the day, let the children buy one or two stickers from the souvenir shop or somewhere or even just collect the free pamphlets from visitors centers. You can even stop by a store with a photo printer and print one or more of the pictures that were taken that day for each of the children.

That night let the kids sit at the room's desk, or even on the floor (you can spread newspaper down if you are worried about glue or glitter mess), and work on their scrap books. They can detail what happened that day and use the photographs or clippings from the pamphlets to personalize what their adventures were in their scrapbooks, using the colored paper, stickers and glitter to decorate the page and crayons, pencils or markers to write a headline and information on the day's events.

These are great keepsakes for remembering a special family trip for years to come.