Family Project: Your Child's Year In the Life

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

08 Sep 2006 04:30 PM

This year I'm diving into a new project at my daughter's behest because it's her first year in school as a kindergartener. The project requires the help of everyone in the family from both her grandmothers to her cousin to us as her parents. So what does this project entail? Let me give you a small description - for the scrapbookers out there, you'll definitely understand what I'm talking about - but the idea is not to build a scrapbook so much as to let our daughter do it with the input and help of those around her.

As a room mom, I'll be spending a lot of time in my daughter's classroom, helping out with art projects and more. I'll get to take my digital camera in and take pictures of what they are doing in part to document for the school year book (I don't remember getting a year book in Elementary school and don't I feel old) but also in part to capture the memories for my daughter's project.

For example, we took pictures of her in her 'colors' this week, the red outfit, the yellow and the green. She can put those down on a page with some crayons, stories of what she learned this week and adding the words that she's learned to spell.

The project is partially a journal, not only mapping where she's been and what she's done, but also what she's learned. It's to help her see her own progress throughout the year as her handwriting and reading skills improve. She is keeping a weather chart as well, a graph where she measures how many days of sunny, cloudy, windy, rainy and snowy (not here, but you never know!) for each month and she wants to add that to her project book as well.

We're keeping the pages she's already created in a notebook binder and she's done some on construction paper, some on notebook paper and two on printed pages from the computer. She does all the work from the cutting out, to the gluing to the writing. At the end of the year, she wants to take a copy of it and give it to her teacher - but for now, she's getting a real kick out of the fact that we're all contributing our 'thoughts' and that's what she calls them. She's having each member of the family tell or write something down for her that she can then add to her book.

It's just a year in the life, but as all parents know - every year is precious for its own reasons. Have you done anything like this with your kids?

Related Articles:

Summer Learning Activities

End of the School Year Teacher's Gifts

Footprints in our Memories

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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