Helping Kids Get Creative With Scrapbooking: The Everything Goes Scrapbook

I love scrapbooking. I love the fact that scrapbooking is keeping memories of a particular moment in time. I get giddy when young kids show an interest in scrapbooking. I have a five year old cousin that absolutely adores scrapbooking — even if it is just cutting paper and gluing them in random places on a sheet of paper and adding pictures of family members.

The Everything Goes Scrapbook is a theory I have devised over the course of this year. As my family was moving, I did not have access to my “normal” sized album, papers, page protectors, and tools, but did not want this year to pass away without documenting it in some way. Take one year (or month or week) and collect things of life. Literally everything goes into the Everything Goes Scrapbook — which is why it is so perfect for a young child.

My Everything Goes Scrapbook is not anything fancy. I purchased a mini desktop calender from Paper Source (the dementions are 6×6) and have it held together with book rings purchased from Hobby Lobby. You could easily find other mini calenders or create a “blank” calender for the child to decorate each month. You could even use something as easy as a three ringed binder. Over the course of the month I collect little bits and pieces of life. At the end of the month I sit down and organize everything and slip in my book for that particular month. The idea of the Everything Goes scrapbook is to put anything and everything in your book that has been going on in your life. If you are going on a nature hike and your child picks up a leaf and wants to put it in their album — it goes!! If it is their birthday and they get taken out to eat let them put the receipt in their book. I would highly encourage journaling. Get your child to put their thoughts down on paper. Carry journaling boxes or 3×5 cards for random bouts of inspiration. At the beginning of each month (if you are going the year route) or at the beginning of the album, interview your child — favorite movie, color, game, favorite event that happened that month, etc. Also, let your child take snapshots with your camera. These will be great mementos to add to his or her album.