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Creating a Scrapbook For Your Grandchildren

Learn how to create a scrapbook that your children and grandchildren will enjoy for years to come.

Photo, left: my mother as a toddler in 1934, Dedham Massachusetts. The porcelain baby doll with soft cloth body is from Germany, and is still in my mother's collection of childhood memorabilia.

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Whether you live in the same neighborhood or community as your grandchildren or you're located many hours away, you need to make an effort to let your grandchildren know you.

One of the best ways to share your life and memories with your children and grandchildren is to create a memory book or scrapbook about your life to share with them.

Family trees and genealogy provide details and facts, but they don't share the stories, photos, and rich memories you have to pass along to your family. So much of the fabric of families and family history is handed down in photo albums and stories. Why not record these and make a book to give to your grandchildren so they'll know what mom and dad's parents were like when they were young?

How can you do that?

Create a scrapbook for your grandchildren and add to it every year. If you have photos and memorabilia from your childhood, include copies. Write about where you were born, what street you lived on, and anything else about your home town (or home towns if you moved around) that you want to share.

Write about your life as a kid in school, and about your jobs as a teenager. Talk about what you did for fun and also about the mischief you got into with friends or siblings. Write about how you met their grandfather or grandmother (in the case of divorced couples, include stories about all partners and try to make a timeline the kids can understand if they're old enough and there's no animosity to deal with.)

Show photos of where you played, hung out, worked, went to school and so on. If you have pictures of your pets, favorite toys or bike, playground and other things from your youth include them. If you have a special story about how you met your spouse or what your parents were like, include them. Again, if you have memorabilia and photos make copies and add those. For example, I have the blue ribbons I won at 4-H and all my old elementary school report cards plus class photos I can add to my book.

If your family made trips to special places for vacation or to visit other family members in the country or the city or another state, include that if it's interesting and important to you. My family lived in the city until I was in elementary school and I have fond memories of visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins in the country, in New Hampshire, where they heated their home with wood and raised chickens and a big vegetable garden.

If you start now to make your book you'll have it ready when your grandchildren start to get interested in your family history or what you did when you were their age. Begin now, and you'll be ready with a wonderful story book that you can share together and leave behind when you're gone.

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