Image by Cláudia*~Assad via Flickr
Making scrapbooks with your children can be a great way to encourage their creativity, reflect on memories, and create beautiful family keepsakes. Consider planning a time to scrapbook once every few months or with the changing of the seasons.
Milestone Scrapbooks
One idea is to create a scrapbook for each child on his or her birthday each year. This book can be a celebration of their year and include pictures of fun memories, messages from family members, and items such as ticket stubs, certificates, and artwork from the year. Children will build a whole collection of scrapbooks to document their early years and see how they have changed and their worlds have grown. Many children also love seeing their artwork change through the years.
Family Member Books
A great gift for a small child is a family member scrapbook. This book is also great for children with many distant relatives, grandparents who live far away, or lots of cousins names to learn and remember. Each page should have a picture of a family member, their name, and a few fun facts about them. Children can page through the pictures to learn about their relatives and family friends. This can also be a comforting thing for children to look at when they are upset.
Vacation Books
Making a scrapbook after a family vacation can be a great way to make sure that everyone gets to look at the pictures and talk about their favorite memories while they are still fresh. Have each family member design a few pages and help decorate the photos with stickers, quotes, and designs. A vacation scrapbook can be a fun thing to show other relatives or to look at years in the future to see how the children have grown and what things they enjoyed at that age.
