Scrapbooking With Grandchildren

Scrapbooking, Kid-Style
For ways to embellish your kids’ pages, explore www.dltk-kids.com, where you’ll find clip art from popular kids’ cartoons and stories, cultural coloring pages and craft projects, kid-themed poems and other craft ideas. While testing projects with her two young girls, Webmaster Leanne Guenther has learned a few lessons about scrapping with kids. “I have a habit of making lovely scrapbooks, then locking them away so they don’t get ruined,” she confesses. “My girls love to leaf through theirs every week, share them with visitors and take them to school to show their friends. Let your kids make their own books and keep them in their rooms.” Include photos of the kids enjoying their albums in the official family scrapbook that’s stored safely away.

Rather than instruct your children on using your nice papers and stickers, Guenther says, purchase less expensive supplies—or print out paper and clip art from your computer—and let kids use them however they wish. Get doubles when you have film developed and give the extras to your children. Kids aren’t acid-free or photo-safe, Guenther adds: “If you worry that the children’s scrapbooking creations won’t last forever, you’re probably right. But their happy memories will—and that’s really the whole point of scrapbooking.”

Masterpiece Memories
Your refrigerator is papered with finger paintings and school art projects. How to save them all? Some ideas from scrappers we know:

• Take a photo of your little artist in front of the fridge or holding up his favorite drawings for your scrapbook.
• Color copy special projects at a reduced size. Ask the artist to tell you about her work, then incorporate her words and the photocopy on a layout.
• Keep flat art projects in a pocket page, created by gluing half of a page to another full-size sheet. Or just keep the projects in their own page protector.
• Use drawings to create greeting cards, wrapping paper, papier mâché picture frames or calendars for Grandma and Grandpa.
• When it’s time to clear the fridge, have the children help you select a few works of art to keep on display and a few to save. Pitch the rest or, if you can’t bear to, put them in archival storage.

Scrap Speak: “ABC Album”
A theme scrapbook arranged not chronologically, but in alphabetical order with one page of photos and journaling per letter. For example, an ABC album about your child’s favorite things might include pages like A for applesauce, B for his blankie, C for coloring and so on. It’s a fun way to organize an album for kids who are learning their letters.