heartofdakota.com

I am wanting some help for the remainder of Beyond and for next year when we do Bigger- for giving my kids some way to keep memories of their bible verses, poetry copywork,records of the books they've read, what to do with their artwork and so on. You know what I mean? Turning some of their schoolwork and "packaging" it nicely for them to look at for years to come. I haven't done much with that this year yet. I might like to take a few weeks at the end of the year and help them create some nice things using their work. Can anyone help? I'm really bad at this kind of stuff. I need some of you Creative Memories type moms to tell me what you do, without it being too overwhelming though, kay? If this topic has already been covered, maybe you could give me some links.

Hi,

I'm not very good at this sort of thing either! I plan on taking all the photos I have been taking of their work & making a scrapbook out of it. No bulky papers...KWIM? We'll keep a few favorite projects though.

Just my idea! I think there may have been a post before about this but I don't know how to do the link thing.
Hopefully someone else will!

blessings,

I'm not very crafty so what I am doing is super easy! I took a picture of my daughter on her first day of school and matted on cardstock, placed it in the clear cover of a binder and am filling the binder with her work, things that are too big to fit I take pictures of and mat them. I put all the work in sheet protecters and I'm DONE! Like I said, not crafty but all together, neat and easy to access.

Oh, these ARE good suggestions, but just not for me. I'm terrible with taking photos and we don't print them out anymore, they are on my computer. I would really like to get some ideas that don't involve photos if possible. (Do you print these on your own computer, or order the prints online?) Please don't take any offense, I love the photo idea, but I know myself. I'm doing good just to get a family album per year.

Not sure if this is some thing you would be interested in or not. For my son for Christmas I took "my" favorite art projects etc (from the past 5 yrs) and scanned them into the computer and uploaded them to snapfish (I think) and had a book made for him. It did take a little bit of time but he loves sitting down adn looking at it and will have a keepsake and I can get rid of the piles...I kept a few favorites. You could also buy inexpensive frames and put them up in your schoolroom.

I know a friend who hangs wire along the ceiling of her schoolroom and hangs artwork around...it is high enough to be seen, but out of reach so that noone gets "clotheslined"...

Enjoy!!
Kirstin

I keep all of my kids daily work in a 4" three ring binder. But in regards to something "pretty"...I keep a blog updated daily of our various comings and goings, school and family related. At the end of the year the blog can be downloaded into a scrapbook with very minimal work needed on my end...IT'S AWESOME!

I used to scrapbook, but now with all the digital technology out there I just journal on my blog, put the pictures in there while it's fresh on my mind, and then at the end of the year, I just download it and they send me beautiful keepsake of our entire year! I think I'm going to start ordering two sets so one day the boys can each take a set with them to their own homes.

My 07-08 book only cost me $45.00 for 180 pages! Crazy!

In Bigger, your kids will write their Bible verse on a notecard every week. We got a little photo book to keep these in. (4x6 size...my son loved the one with mountains on it and it was less than $1 at Wal-Mart.) Bigger suggests using a binder and page protectors for the science and history notebooking. We're doing that, and occasionally he wants to save an art project from history that we stick in there, too. I also bought a plastic accordian file thing (great description, huh? ) to keep a few bigger-than-8x11 things in. It's one of those that has several sections and has an elastic band that goes around it to hold it closed. (If you want a picture of it, let me know. My description is lacking...)

I do take pictures of almost everything we do. My plan is to make books on shutterfly of our year. They're easy to put together and they frequently have 20% off on them, so they're inexpensive. Much faster than traditional scrapbooking! (Even though I still love it, when there's time.) I don't think we'll keep much paper past the end of the year. I like to declutter things, and we don't have a closet on the main floor of our house at all. So, everything we've got is in sight!

Kathleen

For printing photos I usually upload them and print them a whatever site has the best deal going at that time. I was able to buy a at printer for only a a penny a couple of years ago, but it is expensive to rpint pics with that, but I sometimes do it when I need a pic in a hurry, like for visiting grandparents or whe we travel so we can have goods recent headshots of everyone, just in case.... For putting pics in a binder you can easily buy printer paper and print off inexpensive prints, the quality won't be as good but it would suffice for a school keepsake.

Blessings!