K is sitting down on the sofa and reading. No big deal there you might say, but she is reading her own creations. Not a creation made on those lovely websites at the moment where one can create their own stories, no her book is different.
The book that she is reading is written and illustrated by her, and lovingly ‘published’ by Mummy.
Her holiday journals.
I wrote a series on reading back in 2012, and I’ve always wanted to write this post as a follow on. As I am gearing up to go on holiday for the Christmas break, I thought I would share with you about how we record our holiday. Especially after a comment that I received in part four.
Before we head off on holiday, I usually print off a series of pages that I have created in Word. They all have the same basic layout- date, weather, who we were with and some other features- one of the pages just has a space to draw a picture, some have lines to write with varying amounts of lines and space to draw.
Each morning or evening depending on what works best- I get the children to write what they have done and draw a picture. When they are too little to write- I scribe for them and annotate their artwork so we know what is being conveyed. (For that reason, I also annotate their writing if they are just learning to write)
As the back of the page is blank, they can use it for sticking any tickets or postcards from the day that they wish to add.
When we get home, I take some of the pages that they have left blank and print photographs from the trip. I then take the pages to a stationery shop and get them spiral bound.
This system is a lot of work and I could just use a book that I have bought from the store. I have done that in the past- but somehow these look better and we actually complete them. I’ve never been good at journalling everyday and tend to fall behind. As I am the driving force behind the children’s journals, it is inevitable then that we don’t do it everyday while on holiday and so we need catch up sessions. Trying to work out how many pages to leave for catch up can be tricky and so the task seems over whelming. If we don’t manage to catch up- there are no blank pages reminding us! So for us- writing on printed paper is better.
The journals are a lovely reminder of our holidays and at the moment K is the main reader of them. But I know that one day all three of them, will enjoy rereading about the various trips that we have been fortunate enough to take.
To read the previous posts on the Reading view here:
Somedays by C 
