School Year Albums

Yesterday was a yucky weather day. I was woken up at 8:30am by my daughter coming into my bedroom crying about a thunderstorm waking her up and scaring her. Sure enough big bangs of thunder clapped 2 seconds after she finished her sentence. That was enough to propel her over the footboard of my bed, under the covers and lying next to my head in 1.2 seconds. 5 minutes later my middle child comes in saying the thunder scared him too.

The thunderstorm managed to stick around, terrorizing my children and dog, for 3 hours. Just as I thought it had moved away another clap of thunder would ring out. On top of the lousy weather, Joe started complaining of a sore throat and had a slight fever. Off I sent him back to bed.

I didn't really have anything planned to do from our list of 101 Summer Things to Do and now between the thunderstorm and the sick child it didn't look like we would be doing anything.

Instead, I worked on the boys' School Year albums.

Dan's is the brown album on left. Joe's is the green album on right.

I made Daniel's after his kindergarten year. I wanted a simple album about his school years.

I used a 8x8 top loading album that came with 10 page protectors. I used the same layout on every page with one page for each grade K through twelve grade. I gathered a few pieces of paper that coordinated together, some cardstock and chipboard numbers. I put a 2 inch piece of pattern paper at the top of page, added a strip of cardstock to mat each  year's school photo with. On top of the mat, above the photo is a strip of cardstock with the grade level and a chipboard number to match. To finish it off, I print out the same set of questions (Questions are listed at end of this post.) each year about the school year with Dan's answers, cut them into strips and adhere them around the photo.

At the end of the book in the extra pages, I put his class photos, report cards, and awards he received.

For Joseph's book, I used a different set of coordinated school papers and followed the same layout design.

I did add a twill ribbon border between the pattern paper and cardstock.

One thing I did differently from Dan's book is the background cardstock. In Dan's book I was trying to keep the bulk down so I only used 1 sheet of background cardstock per page protector and used both sides of it. One grade on one side and the next garde on the backside. After I designed it I realized it would be nice to be able to slip his report cards, awards and photos behind the grade instead of putting them at the back of the book. So for Joe's book I used two separate sheets of cardstock in each pocket which allows me to slip things in behind each page.

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As I was working on these albums yesterday, I realized this time next year I'll be doing three of these albums. I knew I'd want to have the alike so I've had the same type of album but in pink for Becca since I made Joe's-three years ago. This summer I'll work on making up her pages so when she goes to kindergarten in the fall her school album will be ready and waiting for her to fill up with many school memories.

List of questions:

Grade/Year:

School:

Teacher:

Transportation:

Grades:

Friends:

Memorable class(es):

Memorable awards, projects, papers, field trips, performances, etc. :

Sports/extracurricular activities:

World news:

Other notes & memories:

Signature:

(I love to see how their handwriting changes and improves each year.)