Creating a School Year Folder

Years ago when my kids started school every year I took a picture of each of them the first day of school. I taped the picture to a large manila folder. I wrote on the outside the teachers name, school, and who were the friends at that time. I also made a note of the answer when asked "What do I want to be when I grow up?".

All year long I collected mementos from the school year - even kept the autographed picture of McGyver, and a sketch my son did wanting to skip school and go fishing that he got in trouble for doing in class.

I kept each of these manila folders in a box together. I plowed through them last year and created a school scrap book for each. What an amazing time travel I had and both of them got teary eyed when I gave them their books for Christmas.

By Notwrong

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By 09/29/2009

Wonderful idea! I wish I'd of thought of doing that.

By 09/29/2009

Excellent idea! I wish I had done it for my first son. I still can as my youngest has started kindergarten just this year. Thank you for this perfect organizing idea.

By 08/27/2009

Great idea and it keeps it all in one place!

By 08/26/2009

Wow! I wish that I had thought to do what you did for your kids! The first-day-of-school photo and question & answer each year are priceless. I kept a lot of my kids' schoolwork and artwork, planning to create a scrapbook for each one *someday*. Now they are grown and living on their own and I still have boxes of memorabilia to sort through *someday* so that I can make their scrapbooks.

It would be wonderful if the papers were all together, but they are not; I tend to pile things and end up with piles of important papers of all sorts that are somewhat chronological, piles that get boxed up during moves or rare cleaning binges. Several times over the years I have started to sort papers, so there are bits that are done, but those bits are scattered among several different boxes. We just moved again last month and I noted dozens of boxes of important papers to file. Maybe this will be the winter that I finally get their scrapbooks done. Your post has inspired me. I sure do wish that I had done as you did, though, and been more organized throughout their school years. Thanks for your great post.