Creating School Year Albums for Kids

Some of my favorite scrapbooks that I've made have been school albums for my kids. When my kids started school, I knew I'd create an album of their school years, and I naively thought that it would probably be just one album for their younger years, and maybe an album for high school. But once I started scrapbooking preschool and kindergarden, I quickly realized that more albums would be in order. I now have one album for PreK - 2nd grade, one album for 3rd-5th, and one album for middle school 6th-8th. High school will be its own album as well.

Scrapbooking school year pictures and mementos can take take some active planning all year long. I am always on the lookout for things they bring home from school that I can keep to put in the books - notes from teachers, small projects they made, things they have hand written, and artwork. And I always have a camera handy so that when they pull something out of their backpack, I can grab a picture of it.

What can go into your child's school album? Just about anything! Each year I try to take some of the same photos like:

• first day of school
• last day of school
• photos by the school sign
• school concerts
• art show and open house
• projects they made
• artwork

Since I don't tend to take a lot of photos at the school (except for concerts and the art open house), I will try to take a picture of them with their projects at home. You may also be able to get photos from their teacher - often teachers will create a slide show of pictures from the year and some will send this home at the end of the school year. I've also asked a few teachers if they could email the slideshow to me if they didn't send it home on a CD.   

So what should you save during the school year?

• concert programs or flyers
• notes from teachers
• certificates 
• drawings
• handwriting samples
• art
• poster projects
• special person projects

Anything that comes home that I think I might use goes right into a folder that I keep on my desk so that I don't lose or misplace anything throughout the year.

One of the best ways to scrapbook children's art is to take a picture of it! When any art comes home, take a picture of it right away, before it gets set aside, lost, crumpled, or hung on the fridge! This is especially great for things like clay or other 3D pieces, and any large scale projects they work on - poster boards, and things like science fair displays. At the end of the year you can print out the pictures, and create a collage of their artwork from the school year! 

When it comes to actually scrapbooking the pages, I usually scrapbook the school year twice - once after the first semester and then at the end of the school year. Waiting to do the whole school year at one will work too...it can be fun to go back over the year with your child and look through all of these things together!

My kids love to look back at their school year books and of all of the scrapbooking I've done, I'm most happy that I made these and have kept up with them though out the years. And, they are fun and relatively easy albums to make!