End of the Year Memory Book

It is the beginning of May. There are only two months of school left. I am both excited for summer vacation, but terribly sad to be leaving my school and firsties. They keep telling me they want to stay in grade one with me forever! *swoon* :)

Well, with the year coming to an end soon, I've been busy getting my end of the year scrapbooks ready. I am lucky to have really efficient EA's in my classroom who help me with all my cutting and laminating WHILE also helping with my students. I don't know how I could do anything without them! My school/district doesn't have mandatory portfolios or anything, so I decided that I wanted to put together a scrapbook for each student with work samples and photos throughout the year. I wanted to have at least one page per month. So I started collecting work samples and photos for each month and holiday. I have one of these little badboys behind my desk:

It has a labeled file folder for each student and everytime I collect a work sample, photo, poem, etc., I just disperse them into the correct folders. So when I am ready to start putting the scrapbooks together, my fabulous helpers and I can just take the student's file and glue everything down into their scrapbook.

My inspiration for these scrapbooks came from the wonderful Shari Sloane {go here, scroll down to Memory Books}. I used the large size construction paper and bound them together. I only laminated the front cover. Here's a little peek into our First Grade Memory Book:

Cover: The cover has our name bugs from our welcome bulletin board from the beginning of the year and a picture of the student on the first day of school.

September: On the first day of school we completed these pages from Cara Carroll's Time Capsules at The First Grade Parade. All of the fonts for my monthly labels come from Lettering Delights. Love those fun, colourful alphabets!

Another September page: We wrote about our Terry Fox run. I also included our shoes we coloured and a picture of the whole class at the run.

October: I included our writing about what we are thankful for (Canadian Thanksgiving), our pumpkin investigation book {again from Cara Carroll} and a picture of the student in their Halloween costume.

November: We wrote about what peace means to us and made these cute little poppy wreaths.

50th Day: This page looks a little bare... I might change it up next year. I included our 50 day math book {from Cara Caroll's 50th Day Mini Unit} and a picture of the student in my awesome pink convertible cutout.

December: This is our four-square writing activity {posted here} and a picture of the student wearing their Rudolph headbands.

January: Our New Year's resolution activity {posted here}.

February: I think I will change this page next year too... I wanted to do some sort of Valentine or friendship writing, but time got away from us. Instead I had a computer sample where they made 10 collections of 10 things for 100 day. February is also "I Love to Read" month, so I printed out our Scholastic certificates for reading 100 books.
 

Another February page: Our groundhog craft/predictions and a picture of the student with their groundhog headband and my groundhog puppet. They love that furry guy!

March: Our leprechaun faces and lucky writing {posted about these here}.

Another March page: Our writing about our favourite Dr. Seuss book and cutie pictures.

April: Our Spring Break reports. I wish I had some sort of April photo for this page! Maybe under an umbrella next year?

Another April page: Our Earth Day writing and pictures.

May: Coming soon.... a write up after our field trip to the zoo. I will also put in a small copy of the zoo map and a picture of the student (or class) at the zoo! Can't wait for our field trip!

June: We will revisit our memory pages from the beginning of the year, and complete these new ones to see how much we have grown!

Last Page: A more recent class photo and a page for the students to sign each other's scrapbooks. 

I think they turned out super cute! I think the kiddos (and parents!) will love them!