End of the Year Memory Books

For as long as I can remember, I've made Memory Books as a gift to my class at the end of the school year.  My style has changed over time and some years the books have been more elaborate than others, but I strongly believe in providing my students this special keepsake. 

Yes, it takes time and planning throughout the whole school year.

Yes, it's work to put them all together.  Like a LOT of work!

Yes, it's more expensive than giving them a dollar store beach bucket. 

Why do I make them? Well, because the children love their Memory Books.  Their families treasure them.  In fact, every year I receive numerous thank you cards, emails, and phone calls telling me how special these books are. Plenty of my former students, who are now graduating high school, tell me they still have their preschool book I made for them. 

So here's a post...a lengthy one filled with lots of pictures...on how I make my Memory Books! 

I actually start thinking and planning the books when I meet my little class for the first time!

The cover has a close-up photo taken at our Meet & Greet before school started. I always have the child hold up their name card in the photo. It helps me learn names and faces before the first day of school but it's an adorable photo for the front of the memory book, too.  You can see the covers weren't exactly the same but they all had that first photo, name matted on a black card, and school themed scrapbook paper accents.

Here's the page when you open the memory book. During the first week of school, I try to capture pictures of each child doing several different activities around the classroom. We make handprints in art which are used on a bulletin board. Once we take down the handprint display, I save them for our memory books.

 

 As you'll see throughout the book, the embellishments and accents are very simple. I mainly use bulletin board border and diecuts from the teacher store. It's easy to trim those bulletin board borders to the page width I need. Plus, I think it adds just enough of that little something extra without distracting from the photos.

These are more pages from the beginning of the year activities.  I like to use photos which include classmates and ones which will really give a sense of how much the kids have grown during the school year.  The "Me Doll" was a first week art activity we showcased in the hall for awhile and then saved for the book.


I used Wordle, a word art generator program, to create a list of things we did each month.  It's so much easier to type in words and phrases than to journal full sentences on each and every page.  I picked out words that were meaningful for that particular month...things like our themes, a few activities we did, color/shape of the month, etc.

Here are the September pages...

And the October pages...Ooooops...I failed to snap a photo of the page with the October word art.



Moving into November...

And then the December pages which showcased our Christmas program and making gingerbread cookies.  The brown gingerbread man is actually made of a craft foam and was a leftover from an art project. The foam isn't too thick for the scrapbook pages.


Two pages to highlight our January learning...


February was filled with Valentine's Day festivities...

and, of course, celebrating our 100th Day of School...


March was a very busy month!  We enjoyed Dr. Seuss week...

Donuts with Dad...

as well as an Easter Egg Hunt and jelly bean counting...

As the school year moved into April, we opened the bakery center and welcomed a special guest donut maker...

Photos to show what happened in April...

These next two pages might very well be my favorites of the entire Memory Book! As we focused on Earth Day and learned ways to take care of the Earth, we fingerpainted and created a beautiful bluish green Earth. I matted a photo of the student wearing their Earth Day headband on the art. I absolutely love these pages because I believe they show that preschool is all about having fun while you learn!

Our spring field trip to the Nature Center...

The May Memory Book pages featured photos from our Marvelous Mom Day at school...

The last few pages included a name collage and our autograph page...

A final class photo the last week of school along with an "All About Me" questionnaire bring the Memory Book to an end...

Some years I include more artwork or writing samples and some years I've had more photos from a specific event.  It just varies according to that particular class.  I suppose it also depends on how my creativity is flowing when I assemble the books!  No two books are exactly alike although they all follow a similar sequence.  I enjoy picking out decorative papers, colors, and accents for each child's book and I like the fact the pages are as unique as the child I made it for.

The past few years I've used standard sized 8.5x11 cardstock, plastic page protectors, and a one inch binder for the Memory Books. I shop during sales, use coupons, and get a teacher discount at the craft stores for everything I possibly can...packages of cardstock, rolls of adhesive, etc.  The bulletin board borders I use to embellish pages are either leftovers from my stash or purchased at the Dollar Store.  A very sweet, very generous parent donated a box of 250 page protectors this year.  I process all my photos at Costco and I do them in large batches to get a quantity discount.  At Christmas I purchased a set of picture frames at Costco which included a coupon for 100 free prints. All these things help with the cost of making the Memory Books but my biggest investment is definitely my time putting them together. 

I hope this post has been helpful for you to see how the Memory Books are created.  Perhaps it has even inspired you! But if there's anything I left out or something that doesn't make sense, please leave a comment or email me learningattheteachertable@gmail.com. 

Memorial Day BBQ & Macaroni Salad

It's a beautiful Memorial Day in the south.  Flags are waving...white puffy clouds are filling the sky...and our backyard is ready for a BBQ for a few friends and my inlaws who are visiting from South Carolina.

 

The hubby is taking care of the ribs while I'm in charge of the side dishes...corn on the cob, crock pot baked beans, and my favorite macaroni salad.  I've used this recipe from the Pioneer Woman on several occasions and I'm always happy with the results.  This time I used bow tie pasta instead of the traditional macaroni noodles.   

 

The original recipe calls for olives but nobody in my family likes them so I leave them out.  Here's my pile of chopped sweet pickles, green onions, and roasted red peppers.  It's very easy to assemble all the ingredients while the pasta cooks.

The roasted peppers are definitely part of the secret charm of this recipe.  I remember my grandmother making macaroni salad with chopped pimentos.  As good as her macaroni salad was...the red peppers in this recipe make it much tastier.

 

The other secret of Pioneer Woman's version is the dressing.  I save the juice from the jar of roasted red peppers and use a healthy dash of pickle juice, too. I always make a little extra dressing and stir it in right before serving the salad.

 

Here's the finished macaroni salad!  It makes for a very pretty bowl on the picnic table with all the bright colors!

  

 All that's left is for me to mix up a quick peach cobbler.  This recipe is a traditional one I found in Southern Living magazine several years ago and I remember it from when I was a kid.  You know it's officially summer when you have homemade peach cobbler in the south! 

 

 

Happy Memorial Day!

 

Five for Friday: Packing & Moving

It's Friday and it's time for Doodlebugs Teaching "Five for Friday" Linky Party!

 

 

At my school, we are required to remove everything from our classrooms for summer.  Everything.  Yes, that's right... everything! Here's a photo while we were in the midst of packing up...

 

When we're finished, only a couple stacks of chairs and a few tables are left.  All the wooden storage units, play kitchen set, and bookshelves are moved down the hall so our custodian can wax floors over the summer. Bless his heart, it's quite a task.  So, all personal items have to be packed up and moved out.  It only took me two trips this year to get mine home!  All this week, I've been sorting, cleaning, purging, and organizing my resources I brought home.  It's a task for sure but it makes me rethink my teaching. 

 

Here's what everything looks like in my basement. My husband calls this my "resource room". 

 

We had custom shelving built a few years ago and it's made life wonderful to have a dedicated space for all my teacher stuff.  And yes, I know how lucky I am! The bulk of everything stays here during the school year and I "shop" from it each week.  Sometimes I feel like all I do is carry stuff back and forth to school but it's a great set-up for me.  Would you like to see more of my "resource room"?  I could try to do a blog post on my room although it's a tight fit to get pictures in there!

 

Having lunch on the deck was a nice treat this week.  Very different than lunch at school!  LOL!  I ate the same kinds of things I usually do but I sure missed the little conversations all around me.

 

 

After a couple days of good soaking rains these pepper plants seemed to double in size the next day!  I planted more herbs than last year and have already been enjoying those. Made the best spaghetti sauce this week using some fresh basil and oregano from my potted herbs! Do you have a little garden?  I love tending to mine, watching it grow, and putting it into our meals.

 

 

Look at this wonderful forecast!  We're having unusually milder temps and low humidity for the south so my plan is to enjoy before the sweltering summer heat really hits us!

 

Five for Friday: It's a Wrap!

That's right!  "It's a wrap" at my school!  Our final graduation scene is over and the credits are slowly rolling for the end of a great school year.  This has been a crazy, busy, exciting week so I'll share a few highlights with you and Doodle Bugs Teaching linky party.

 

Last Friday we had our end of year celebration at a local park.  Nothing elaborate...just plain & simple fun!  The kids played...we ate a yummy picnic lunch...water balloons were tossed...and they surprised me with an early birthday treat!  An adorable photo cake!

 

 

One of my favorite end of the year activities is cleaning out our Imagination Box!  Throughout the school year, we add bits & pieces of leftover art supplies to the box.  Earlier this week, I gave each student a plateful of supplies and they got busy creating their masterpieces.  Any administrator who thinks art is a waste of time and has no educational value hasn't seen my class using the Imagination Box!   

 

 

As if the last week of school wasn't hectic enough, I had a low grade fever and an upper respiratory infection.  Then I got stung by a wasp.  Evidently, I was stung repeatedly even though I never felt a thing.  My arm very quickly turned hot, red, swollen, and blotchy.  A quick trip to my Urgent Care doctor during the last day of school wasn't in my lesson plans but I survived and made it to preschool graduation later that night!

 

Beautiful and thoughtful gifts from our students and their families!  

 

Even better than the wonderful gifts are moments like this...

 

I'll be back on the blog (once my room is packed and cleaned) with a post on my memory books I made for each student!  Get ready...it will be a photo-filled post!

 

 

 

Five for Friday: Nine Days & 746 Pictures

Does anyone feel like the last few weeks of school are CRAZY?  Like more crazy than the beginning of school?  Crazier than the holidays? If you're nodding your head, please know you're not alone.  I've got NINE days left of school and a To Do list a mile long! 

 

Here's a look at my Five for Friday hosted by Doodle Bugs Teaching.

We're learning about frogs & turtles, cattails & lily pads.  We call this unit Pond Life!  In the sensory tub, I left the dried green peas we used during our insect studies and added a collection of fun little pond creatures. 

Next week, we'll clean out the peas and put water in the sensory tub.  Note to self: Take towels to school.

 

 

Our Moms were thrilled with their Mother's Day gifts!  The kids used small canvas squares, oil pastels, and watercolors to create beautiful flower artwork.  I should've kept one for myself.  They were gorgeous! 

We also assembled a class cookbook.  Each child dictated how Mommy cooks their favorite food and illustrated the recipe.  A treasured keepsake for sure!

 

 

 

We took a strip of Dollar Tree bulletin board border and used it for a quick number review.  Students loved using the BINGO dot markers to show their number knowledge!

 

 

Georgia is having the best spring weather!  We're getting the right combination of sunshine & rain with nice, moderate temperatures.  Here's my favorite southern shrub...Carolina Baptista.  The yellow buds only last a few weeks, but I look forward to it every spring.

This furry guy always looks forward to his planter box getting filled with several catnip plants.  Good thing these herbs recover from being squashed down by a ten pound kitty.

 

 

I uploaded 746 pictures to the Costco photo processing lab this afternoon.  Obviously, I haven't printed any of my pictures since...well, let's see...since the beginning of the school year.  I had planned to work on my student memory books all day Saturday but the order is so large it won't be ready until Sunday morning.  Note to self...Print photos on a monthly basis for next year's class.