While there are still a few weeks left of the school year, you are quite likely planning some activities to wrap up and celebrate the accomplishments of the year. One annual activity that our class enjoyed was an end of year scrapbook. We spent a good chunk of the last few days of school creating these scrapbooks, which not only kept the children engaged, but it was a social time to reflect with their friends on the year’s events. Win-win!

We had binders available to us so we used those to hold the numerous pages the children created (however, you could tie the hole-punched pages together with ribbon if you don’t have binders or use book ring clips).  We gathered an assortment of colored copy paper, photos that were taken over the year, and some stickers to decorate.

Hand-written notes to each student were also part of the project. We copied pre-made note paper (3 to a page) that students could cut and write a message to each of their classmates. These notes were distributed and included in each child’s scrapbook, too. We allocated quite a bit of time over the last week of school to the note-writing, emphasizing that they should be compliments to each other.

In addition to writing the notes, the children decorated or colored in the borders of the notes. Since there were about 30 students in our class, each student had about 10 sheets of note papers to manage. They paper-clipped the sheets together in between writing sessions. We also had them finish writing and decorating before cutting the individual notes out, just to manage the paper a little more easily.

Notes from classmates

Students were asked to choose some work samples that they were proud of from the year to include in their scrapbooks. We suggested trying to gather samples from all curricular areas.

Writing sample

We gathered all the supplies when it was time and just let the kids spread out over the room with their papers, photos, glue sticks, and markers.  It was fun to see how the children arranged their scrapbook pages. Some did a page for each event and curricular area, some just put things in with no particular order, while some chose to organize pages by months of the year.

Creating an end of year scrapbook with your class is a great way to highlight the best memories and work that was done over the course of the year. Setting aside dedicated time during those last few days of school allows the children to relive the year with each other as well, which ends up making the creation of scrapbooks a highlight of the year too!

History work sample