Collecting Memories

Kindergarten is a special year in a child's life.  For years, I have struggled with how to collect and save children's work to share with families at the end of the year. I have tried several methods but none seemed to really work well.  When I saw this, I knew I had found the answer.


Kindergarten Memory Boxes

I purchased the boxes from here.  To create the top, I glued strips on construction paper onto the box to give it a pop of color.  Then, I made a picture collage of my class and copied it onto legal size paper.

Inside the box, families found pieces of their child's work from throughout the school year.

Each month, we would create a "craft" based on our unit of study; most related to social studies.  Due to storage issues, I did not assemble the pizza boxes until the last month of the school year.  Instead, I stored the student work in my teacher rolling cart.

With the help of my students, they filled their Kindergarten Memory Box.  It was a great way for them to "go down memory lane" and talk about what we had studied and learned.

This note was was the first thing that parents found as they opened up the box.

I liked how easy this was to do and that the student work was not limited to a certain size.   It did require some prep and planning but overall, it was a success.  I liked it so much, that I am planning on creating a Memory Box for my son.

How do you collect memories and keepsakes for families?