Year Long Memory Projects
Check out holiday/seasonal resource books and $2 holiday/seasonal picture books at SproutClassrooms.com!I love the end of school, but I hate scrambling for pictures and memories to put together gifts for my students. If I know in September where I want to be in June, it's much easier. Take a look at some of these projects and start planning for them before school even starts. I'm a very visual person, so I try to leave a reminder of some sort in plain sight so I can remember to pass out quilt squares or scrapbook templates after an activity.
Memory Quilt
I love quilting, and can easily sew squares together on my sewing machine. This year, I will keep a large stack of white paper squares on my front table to pass out after milestone activities (birthdays, field day, theme units, etc.). Students can color a picture of the activity using fabric crayons (be careful on writing-it needs to be backwards-I'm just going to write in the event later with a Sharpie). I will take the paper squares home that evening to my giant stack of pre-cut white fabric squares, iron on the pictures and sew each square to the child's quilt. If I'm only sewing one square on at a time to each quilt, it shouldn't take long and I can do it while watching TV or relaxing. At the end of the year, I'll throw batting and a patterned back on each quilt, and pass them out to the kids. What a surprise it will be!
Scrapbooks
Using a free software kit from Creative Memories, you can easily keep up a scrapbook of pictures from the year for your students. This software allows you to simply input the pictures, type in a brief description of the activity and save it to print out at the end of the year. I'm going to try to get a local copy place to sponsor our scrapbooks and print them out for free.