How to Make a Memory Book

What You Need:

• Small blank scrapbook
• Scrapbooking glue
• Scrapbooking markers
• Embellishments (such as stickers, ticket stubs, trinkets collected from your family's various adventures, leaves, etc. - as long as it is relatively flat, it will work for the scrapbook)
• Photos from your family adventures over the past year

What You Do:

1. Pull out all the photos you've taken of your family over the past year.
2. Go through the photos with your child, and let him pick out the events and pictures that he remembers most, and enjoyed the most. While you're going through the photos, you and your child can talk about each event remembering some of the highlights together.
3. Let your child pick out as many pictures as he wants to include in his memory book. You may need to print more copies of the photos you have.
4. Once your child has picked out all the photos he wants in his album, help him put all the photos in order by date chronologically, from oldest to most recent starting with the beginning of the year. You don’t need to remember the exact date, as long as you remember the month or general time of year/season and what the event was. This is a great way for your child to practice his grouping and sorting skills and and reinforce time and calendar concepts.
5. Once you and your child have organized the photos, start with the earliest pictures of the year, and instruct your child to glue the pictures into the scrapbook using the srapbooking glue. He can arrange them however he likes.
6. On each page, instruct your child to write the date and/or event in the photos. They should do this using the scrapbooking markers.
7. When all the pictures are glued in to the scrapbook and dated, your child can go back to the beginning and start decorating the pages.
8. Your child can decorate the pages, by writing a few sentences about the event with the pens or markers etc., adding stickers, or other embellishments. He can also add any momentos he may have saved from the event. For example, if you went to a museum, your child might have a postcard from the exhibit that he can glue into the memory book with pictures from the event. This part of the project is completely up to your child, they can be as creative and as colorful as they want to be when decorating the pages.
9. Decorate the pages for all of the photos you have in your memory book until you and your child have completed the whole thing. Doing the activity together is a great way to reminisce about all of the good times you've had over the past year and to discuss all of the exciting things to come in the new year.

After your child has finished the scrapbook, let him show it off to others. Retelling stories and events is good way to develop reading comprehension and story-telling skills.