A Family Travel Map: How to Track Trips With Kids
A map on the wall gives kids a way to see where they have been, and a reason to learn where everything else is. A few decisions up front keep it from turning into a pincushion.
Kids remember trips in fragments: the hotel pool, the gas station with the giant dinosaur, the night it rained in the tent. A map on the wall ties those fragments to places. Ask a six-year-old to find the pin for the beach trip and you're suddenly talking about oceans, states and how far away Grandma lives.
The setup below is built to survive the years when the kids are small and still make sense when they're teenagers.
Give every person a color
This is the decision that makes a family map readable. One pin color per person, plus one for trips you all took together. Anyone standing at the map can see at a glance who went where, and a kid who went to camp in another state gets a pin that's theirs alone.
- Everyone togetherAlpaca White
- One parentDelhi Sunset Orange
- The other parentNordic Ice Blue
- OldestIrish Clover Green
- YoungestSedona Brown
Two small rules keep the colors useful. Pick the key before the first pin goes in, and write it down next to the map, because nobody remembers what green meant two years later.
World map or US map
If most of your family travel happens in a car, start with a United States map. Crossing a state line is a pin, so a single road trip can add five or six, and kids get the satisfaction of filling things in quickly. A world map makes more sense once there are flights and passports in the picture. The Starter Bundle comes with either one.
The free online map tracks both at once, so the wall can show one and the screen the other. Here's ours for the US, which still has a long way to go:
It counts all 50 states plus DC and five territories, shows a running total, and works in any browser. Start a free states map in about a minute.
Hang it above little hands
Push pins are small and sharp, which is a bad combination at toddler height. Hang the map high enough that the bottom edge is out of reach, pin for young kids yourself, and keep the spare pins in a closed box somewhere they can't get to. Older kids can do their own pinning once they're past the stage of putting things in their mouths.
Hanging it high also keeps it looking good, since over a sofa the map sits at the height most people hang art anyway. Our tapestry hanging guide has the measurements.
Make pinning a ritual
The pin is more fun as the last step of a trip than as a chore. A few ways families make it stick:
- Pin night. The first evening home, everyone gathers at the map. The youngest person who went on the trip picks the spot.
- Earn the pin. Before it goes in, each kid says one thing they want to remember from the place. Write it down; it becomes the trip page.
- Next-trip pins. A different color for places the family wants to go, moved over when they happen.
Turn it into a geography game
A map with the family's pins on it is a better teaching tool than a blank one, because the kids have a stake in it. Some games that work on a wall map:
- Find the pin. Name a trip, see who finds it first. Then name the country next to it.
- How far? Estimate the distance between two pins, then check it.
- Pin a friend. Classmates from other places, or a pen pal's town, get a pin of their own color.
Write a trip page with the kids
Every trip can have its own page on your free map: dates, where you went and a few lines of story. Let the kids write it, spelling and all. Years later that's the part you'll want to read.
Touch-to-Travel pins add a trick kids love: tap the pin with a phone and that trip's page opens. The pins don't need an app or a subscription. With the Globetrotter Club, the page also holds the trip's photos and a song, so tapping the pin from the beach trip plays the song from the car ride.
Let the grandparents follow along
The online map can be shared. Invite grandparents, aunts and uncles to your family board as viewers and they'll see each new trip and the map filling in, without anyone texting forty photos. Relatives who help with the stories can be editors instead. It's all free and runs in a browser, so nobody has to install an app.
Common questions
What age can kids pin their own trips?
It depends on the kid more than the number. Once they're reliably past putting small things in their mouths and can handle a sharp point, let them pin with you nearby.
Will the pins stay in a fabric map with kids around?
Ours come with metal and silicone backers that hold them tight in fabric. For a map that gets a lot of handling, mounting it on a cork or foam board is sturdier still.
