Your summer splash pad logbook

Phones drown. Photo rolls become an unsorted mess of 4,000 splash-pad pictures by August. A paper logbook fixes both problems and adds something the camera roll can't — a kid who can hold the pen.

Children love filling in a row of their own. Six-year-olds sound out the pad name. Nine-year-olds rate the spray cannons out of five stars and argue the case in writing. By Labor Day you have a hand-drawn family memento, not a 12-gigabyte folder you'll never open. Screens stay in the bag. Memory sticks. The logbook is the cheapest piece of summer infrastructure you'll print all year, and it doubles as a scrapbook the next morning when you tape in a ticket stub or a small photo. Take it with you next June and your kids will run to the same favorites — or pick a new one from page two.

One self-contained packet, designed to print in five to seven sheets depending on your margins. No signup, no email, no upsell — every page is on this URL.

• Twelve-visit log table with date, pad name, city/state, weather, kids' favorites, and a 1–5 star rating column.
• Packing checklist excerpt — the ten essentials, fridge-ready.
• End-of-summer reflection page with five guided prompts.
• Top-5 favorites tracker — your family hall of fame for next year.
• "Would visit again?" column built into the log so a glance tells you which pads to repeat.

The logbook is laid out for US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) but A4 also works — the table reflows. Print at 100% scale, not "Fit to page", or the rows will squash. Margins of half an inch all around look right. Color or black-and-white is fine; the design uses no color-only information, so a B&W print costs you nothing.

Double-sided is a great idea — the table and reflection page are roughly one sheet each. Standard 20 lb home printer paper is plenty; 24 lb or 32 lb feels nicer if a kid will carry it around for three months. If you're saving as PDF, choose "Save as PDF" in the print dialog, then drop the file into your family photos folder so it survives across phones.