We all remember those good old days when we create our scrapbooks and write down our feelings and experiences in our journals. It’s a fulfilling and fun experience because we create our tiny little worlds by doing these creative activities. However, Scrapbooking and journaling are more than just a hobby nowadays, and our children should understand that.
The Positive Effects of Journaling
Journaling is an essential process of introspection. It looks into the self and its experiences. It helps us understand what has happened.
Many counselors recommend journaling to their clients because the activity is so simple to do. Yet, it has such a great effect on controlling our feelings and emotions and how we can identify them. Studies have even found that journaling can make us feel relaxed and reduce stress from our daily lives.
Teaching our children this activity at an early age can help our children mature the right way. They can learn what they have felt throughout the day and analyze it in their own little ways. This is one big step into self-awareness.
Journaling can be made into a fun activity by helping them decorate their journals. You can even create a conversation out of it. It’s good to ask your children what they have written down in their journals today, but it’s also important to respect their privacy. Don’t force them to share. Rather, wait for them to share what they have written in their journals.
The Positive Effects of Scrapbooking
Much like journaling, scrapbooking has its own positive effects on our minds, but instead of helping us understand experiences, it helps us categorized them. Scrapbooking is more centered on memories than self-awareness, and it is through these memories we start to learn more about ourselves.
Scrapbooking is a fairly simple activity that any child can do. There is no given outline as to how one should scrapbook. It’s all about expressing the self and what they have remembered. Scrapbooking can also help alleviate stress from the strain of emotions and feelings we feel every day. The best part of it all is that we can share what we scrapbook with other people and show our creativity alongside it.
Don’t be strict with how your child should do their scrapbook. It can be as much of a mess as they want it to be. They should be allowed to express themselves in any way they want.
If your child is struggling with where to start when it comes to these activities, technology can help them decide.
How Can Technology Help My Children?
The Internet
The internet can teach your children a lot of things. It can teach them the process of journaling (e.g., what to write and formatting) and how it makes them feel better. It can also teach them advanced scrapbooking elements, such as how does hot stamping works and how it can improve their scrapbook’s visuals to new heights. The internet contains a lot of information, and with kid-friendly filters on, it has become a lot safer. So if your children have any questions about journaling or scrapbooking, make sure to lead them to the internet.
Digital Stickers
Every scrapbook requires some pretty stickers on them. Journals can also be decorated with stickers as well. But customized stickers can be hard to do in real life. This is why you can do this process digitally.
Many websites offer the ability to create digital stickers. Your children can make their own stickers on these sites, and then they can print these stickers to put into their scrapbooks. It’s a fairly simple process but worth teaching your children to do, as it can give them the idea of simple digital design. That is a skill that can then use one day in the future.
Digital Journals
Aside from using the traditional pen and paper for journaling, your children can utilize online platforms such as Notability to help them write or draw down their feelings experiences every day. Many counselors believe that children stop their journaling because it’s quite a hassle for them to do it. But online platforms help reduce this hassle by making the journaling process more engaging.
Some of these platforms can notify your children when to journal and what to write down. Some of them even offer blueprints they can follow to design their journals. Nowadays, digital journals can easily replace pen and paper ones, and now that they are more accessible through phones and tablets, your children can journal anywhere at any time!
Scrapbooking and journaling are two great activities that can help your child control their feelings and emotions while also alleviating stress. It is a place where they can express themselves fully and become better persons in the future. So teach them these two activities today.
