Personal yearbooks are one of my favorite projects. I create a personal yearbook for each student in my children’s classes. The front page of the personal yearbook contains a photo of the student at the beginning of the school year and a photo of the student at the end of the school year. I love to see how they’ve grown.
Each month, I took a photo of each student at school. The students in my daughter’s second grade class wrote about their photo in their own words. I interviewed each of the kids in my son’s kindergarten class and wrote down what they said. The last page of the personal yearbook contains a photo of the student with their teacher and a handwritten note from the teacher. This year I completed 40 personal yearbooks – 20 for each class. The personal yearbooks were given to the moms at the Mother’s Day breakfasts at school.
I loved seeing all the moms look through the personal yearbooks with their kids. My son had seen his pages throughout the year but he hadn’t seen them all put together. After we looked through the album together, he said, “I really wish we could keep this mom.” I was only too happy to tell him that we were taking it home!
Here’s a quick glance inside my children’s personal yearbooks.
My son’s book contained pages for school events, everyday activities and field trips. Interviewing the kindergartners was such a joy. They were so sweet and I never knew what they are going to say.
My daughter’s teacher assigned project that were done at home each month. Most of the pages in Kara’s book are about those monthly projects. You can see that she wrote a lot because she knows that is what her scrapbooking mom expects. The other students in her class started out the year writing brief descriptions until specific questions were provided for them to answer.
The personal yearbooks are definitely a labor of love. The time involved for each month totaled several hours for each class but it is a wonderful feeling to know that these children will have these memories for the rest of their lives.
I hope to continue with the personal yearbook project next year!
