Did your child graduate this year? Four years of high school seems to go by so fast. Wasn’t it just yesterday that are graduates started kindergarten? Now they’ll be headed off to college by fall. Don’t forget to preserve and document your child’s high school graduation memories with a graduation scrapbook.
You may already have a school scrapbooking album for your child, but high school graduation memories can fill an entire scrapbook. Dedicate one album for this special occasion. It doesn’t need to be a large album, but one that can accommodate professional portraits might be important if you plan to include the sittings for senior pictures.
Senior pictures are usually taken the summer before a student’s senior year. Still, they deserve a page in a graduation album. Use your favorite pose or the one used in the high school yearbook for your graduation scrapbook’s title page.
Preparing a scrapbook for high school and memories doesn’t have to be difficult. Take a copy of your child’s graduation announcement and showcase it on a page layout. Don’t forget to include cards and letters from family and friends. Highlight ones with graduation advice. Include a special letter from you with a personal message to your child. Tell him your hopes and dreams for the future along with things you wish you would have been told on graduation day.
Highlight any special awards or honors that your child is receiving at the graduation ceremony. Designed page layouts to highlight these accomplishments. You may want to include the original certificates or make copies.
If your child is giving a speech at the graduation ceremony, take some photographs of the graduate preparing and practicing the speech. Preserve his notes including any drafts and use them on a scrapbook page.
Newspapers often cover graduations. Clip articles from your local paper for a graduation scrapbook page. If you or another family member have placed a congratulations newspaper ad for your graduate, make a photocopy of it to preserve it in the album. Newspaper articles tend to fade over time, and copies will last longer.
Before the celebration even starts, make a list of the photo opportunities you don’t want to miss. Photographs of your graduate with family, teachers and friends are as important as pictures of the actual ceremony.
Mementos of high school graduates should include the program from the graduation ceremony. Try to preserve more than one copy to use on a graduation scrapbook page to show both the cover and the inside as much as possible.
Candid shots are a fun way to document graduation parties. Send a camera with your child when he attends graduation celebrations. Plan to exchange photographs with your child’s friends as well. That way you’ll have plenty of candid photos to choose from for your graduation album.
You should definitely include a copy of your child’s final report card or transcript. A nice complement to the scrapbooking page would be a copy of the college acceptance letter he received from the college he plans to attend.
The final closing page to the graduation scrapbook could be a photograph of him leaving for college. You might also choose to include a picture of his first day of kindergarten alongside a graduation picture.
It’s easy to create a graduation scrapbook that will soon become a family heirloom. The most important part of designing a graduation scrapbook is to document and preserve your child’s high school memories.