Traveling With Friends and Other Critters

Traveling with children can be so much fun! You get to see new places and learn new things through their eyes! Traveling with a friend is even more fun! My favorite traveling friend is Little Red Hen. (She’s a stuffed toy but she doesn’t know it.) We go to lots of interesting places and take loads of pictures. Then we put those pictures into scrapbooks.

Studies show that people who travel are happier. I read about a study that compared the emotional well-being of people who shop and acquire things versus people who go on vacations. People who shop are happy for a very short time. People who go on vacation are happier for longer periods of time and continue to be happier when they relive their experiences. Scrapbooks are an excellent way to help you relive those experiences.

Here’s some tips for taking interesting vacation pictures.
Take pictures of:
• The before and after activities such as packing and unpacking
• Traveling to the destination—we photograph the train or plane ride to the cruise ship
• Signs that tell you where you are and what you’re looking at—that helps you remember when you go to make your scrapbook
• Funny things—anything that you find interesting and/or weird
• The people you’re with and meet along the way— sometimes you need to ask permission if you’re photographing someone you don’t know
• Food you eat
• Things you do—take pictures of everything!

Other tips:
• You need at least 200 pictures to make a 20 page scrapbook. You won’t use them all but it’s important to have a good selection.
• Take the pictures in both landscape and portrait format. That gives you more options when it comes time to putting your pictures into your scrapbook.
• You can use a traditional scrapbook method where you print the pictures and manually glue them into a scrapbook.
• You can digitally scrapbook on line through various websites like Shutterfly and Kodak.
• If you don’t want to make a scrapbook you can also make posters, calendars, and more at those websites.

It’s even more fun to travel with a friend like my Little Red Hen. Next time you travel, bring one of your child’s small stuffed animals and take pictures of their adventures! It’s fun! It’s also a great way to get a young child to hold still for a picture. Happy traveling!