We like to think we'll do anything for our grandchildren, but when it came time to replace our 15-year-old van with a new one, we drew the line at buying a car with a built-in DVD player.
"But your grandchildren will love it," said the salesman.
"We'll pack a pencil," said my husband.
Of course. When we travel with our grandchildren, we like to share thoughts as well as activities. To that end, we bring along a notebook for each child, a permanent glue stick or roll of double-faced tape, and plenty of pencils. The equipment may be humble, but the activities are fun and the results more revealing than any photograph.
Ways to Keep Them Busy
Keep a diary. We buy each child two postcards of every place we visit, be it a scenic drive, an attraction or — when possible — an activity we take part in. The catch: They glue the postcards into their notebook and write a few sentences about each one. Our initial rule was one sentence per grade (e.g., two sentences for the second grader, three for the third grader, and so on). This soon fell by the wayside as each child wrote, and wrote, and wrote, their thoughts tumbling onto the page as we drove to the next stop or had downtime in a hotel.
The best part, of course, is when they read their words aloud. We love hearing their thoughts and enjoy the lively discussions that follow.
Make lists. Like most children, our grandkids are inveterate list-makers. They have kept track of the number of miles we drive each day, the kinds of rocks they find and animals they see, the state names they spot on license plates, the places we visit, and the things we do.
Some of their lists have led to real-world math experiences. Our 8-year-old grandchild added up how many miles we'd driven and then, after asking how much it cost to drive one mile, figured out our transportation costs. (Sure, we were proud, but also depressed at the total!)
Draw pictures, maps, and diagrams. Sometimes pictures really do speak louder than words. The children have sketched animals, diagrammed hotel rooms, and drawn simple maps of parks and zoos.
Interview interesting people. We incorporated interviewing into our vacation activities after Samantha, age 10, met a woman who said she had more teddy bears than anyone else in the world — 5,029 of them! When the woman proved her claim by showing us her name in the Guinness World Records, Samantha had a thousand questions — how did she get started collecting, which bear was her favorite, and so on. She dutifully recorded the woman's answers in her notebook. "Now I'm a journalist," she said proudly.
Later, Jeremy, age 7, interviewed a man who had helped carve the presidential faces on Mount Rushmore. Both ranked these interviews as among the things they liked best on our South Dakota trip.
Rank the various activities. The rankings were a spontaneous outgrowth of the list-making activity. At first, places and events were simply awarded first, second, and third place. The process grew more complex as Samantha gave the light show at Mount Rushmore a "6" but rated her interview with the teddy-bear lady as a "9.5."
Report to the stay-at-home parents. Our grandchildren can hardly wait to show their journals to their parents and, in so doing, relive the entire experience. Now their notebooks — one a child, per trip — have an honored place in their family bookcase.
Making Memories
As grandparents, the benefits of these activities go far beyond the obvious — occupying the kids during long car rides, giving them practice in writing and diagramming, and preserving memories. They give us a window into our grandchildren's minds. We not only learn what they like; we learn how they think.
Our own children's journals were less evolved. They were simply diaries — no interviews or drawings, certainly no intricate ranking system. But as we looked back at them years later, we saw how the two-sentence entries of the 6-year-old turned into the paragraphs of the tween and eventually into the essays of the teen. We saw their observations sharpen, their intellect grow, and their personalities develop. Their journals during a visit to Washington, D.C., are a good example.
Douglas, then 10, wrote about how tall the Washington Monument is, how big the circumference, how long it took to build it.
Michael was more interested in the people. His journal entries note that George Washington led soldiers in the Revolutionary War, wore a wig, and had false teeth.
Peter, our middle child, was concerned with family relationships. He wrote a disparaging remark about me after I'd insisted he finish his entire glass of orange juice that morning.
Close in age and ability, our three children sat side-by-side in the car, but might as well have been visiting different planets. Their journals let us appreciate their differences as well as their insight, which is why, when traveling with our grandchildren, we have expanded on this tradition. That's why we always pack a pencil.
Related Information
The number on a pencil refers to the hardness of the graphite (not lead) core. The higher the number, the harder the core and the lighter the mark left on the page.
You can see Jackie Miley's world's largest private collection of Teddy Bears at the Super 8 motel in Hill City, S.D.
The Washington Monument is 555 feet tall.
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