Make a Year-End Memory Book!

May 26, 2015

With the school year coming to a close, we know that sometimes it’s a scramble to come up with engaging lesson plans this close to summer vacation. With that in mind, we scoured the internet for some inspiration for year-end activities and found a great memory book idea from Scholastic. The goal of this project is to have your students craft personalized memory books outlining their top favorite moments from the school year. This is a great way to keep your students on track and teach them about chronology and timelines, all while improving their writing skills.

To prepare for this project, compile a folder full of digital images that you’ve taken of the class throughout the year and put it on the school’s shared drive. You can also encourage students to bring in their own photos as well, as long as they pertain to activities that took place in the classroom. Be sure to have plenty of paper and art supplies available for students to create their memory books with.

Once you’ve prepped for the project, follow these simple steps below:

Step 1: Encourage your students to recall some of their favorite moments from the past year as a group, listing their top 10 classroom memories in order.

Step 2: Take a field trip to the computer lab, where your students can access the shared folder of preloaded images. Allow them to choose eight-to-ten photos to go along with their selected memories, pasting them into a word document as they choose. Remember to be inventive! If a student is having a hard time finding an actual photo for a memory, remind them to use resources such as clipart to help them along the way. Once each student has selected their photos, instruct them to print the photos from the word document.

Step 3: After all of the images have been printed, have your students cut them out and arrange them chronologically. They should glue each picture onto a piece of construction paper. Make sure to remind them to leave room to go back and write in their memory. Scholastic recommends allowing no more than two photos on each piece of paper, for the sake of space.

Step 4: Instruct each student to write up a short caption for each photo, describing the memory that they are trying to convey. You may choose to have students type up their captions, print them, and glue them beneath their corresponding photo instead. Once all captions are complete, have the students put their pages in order, leaving some extra room for additional comments on the backs of each photo page.

Step 5: Allow the students to design a cover for their memory books, including their name, the year, and their teacher’s name. Next, add a class photo to the front of every book. You may copy and paste it into the cover sheet word document, or print it out and have the students glue it onto their handwritten cover sheet. If possible, you should laminate the cover or each book for long-lasting wear and tear.

Step 6: All that’s left is the binding! If you have access to a binding machine, use it to bind the books together. If not, you can use ribbon and a hole puncher to tie all of the pieces of paper together. On the back cover, have each student write the word “autographs” at the top.

Now that each student has their own memory book, why not share them at a year-end party or as an activity on the last day of school? You can encourage students to write positive messages and sign each other’s autograph page, just like a real yearbook!

What end-of-the-year crafts do you have planned for your class this year? We’d love to hear all about them on our Facebook page!

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