Scrapping with Young Children

excerpted from Growing Up ME! (available February 2004)

Here are some tips on scrapbooking with young children, based on my experiences with my 6-year-old daughter.

Set aside time to scrap. Expect to work on just their pages at the beginning. Consider yourself their personal guide. This saves you frustration when you don’t get anything done on your own pages!

Go through your duplicate pictures. Let the child/ren picks which photos to scrap. Or suggest a particular topic, "how about you do a page on XX?" Then let them pick which photos best that that story for them.

Looking at the photos they’ve chosen, suggest two to three solid colors for background paper. Once that’s chosen, offer a selection of a few patterned papers. This gives kids the "power of personal choice", while you also maintain a little power over your own supplies! Plus, too many choices can overwhelm kids. Offer them a few "acceptable" choices, and everyone's happy.

Now walk the child/ren through the process. Discuss cropping to make sure just what they want is the photo ("do you want that part of the room in your picture, or do you want to cut it out?" Or "would you like to keep this picture this shape, or do you want to make it a circle or oval?" Again, offering personal choices, but with limits.) My daughter can use my trimmer, as long as I am sitting beside her. I do any precise cutting that needs an Exacto knife, but other than that, I want her to practice using her fine-motor skills.

Ask her if they want to mat any of the pictures. If the child would like to, you can ask which paper she would like to mat the photo on, position it on the paper, then either let her trim it to size, or you do it. My personal choice is to let the child do as much as possible. In my opinion, it's ok to position it on the paper first, because you are showing her how to mat a photo. Eventually she will get to the point where she knows how to do this on her own.

Once everything is shaped/matted, do the journaling. Ask "leading" questions and journal it using their words. Journaling can be in your handwriting, theirs, or on the computer. I handwrite the journaling on a separate piece of cardstock so it becomes another "element" for my daughter to place on the layout. If you were with them when the pictures were taken, you probably know what happened, so you can ask questions to get to the information. By leading questions, I mean:

What did you like best about this?

What do you remember most?

Who was with you?

Where did you go?

What did you do there?

Once the photos are cropped & matted, and the journaling done, then hand the child all the pieces, and let them place them on the background however they likes. Yes, they're typically not straight (either in cut or placement), or with any adult sense of balance -- but it's THEIR page. Let them do the adhesive (under your watchful eye).

Read the journaling back to them again -- kids always love hearing stories, especially when it's their own!

If you have a group of 20-25 kids, instead of a one-on-one scrapping session, I would break them up into smaller groups. When I taught 5's in PreKindergarten, and we had an "ambitious" activity, like painting t-shirts, we would do the activity during center time, where one of the centers was the t-shirts (other centers would be manipulatives, reading, kitchen, etc). So while most of the class was occupied elsewhere, we could take however many to give a little more hands-on attention. One adult could probably take up to 5 safely by herself. While you're taking journaling dictation for one student, the others could be cropping, matting, or adhering, or whatever. I would not attempt to lead 20-25 of them by myself -- some will need more help with cutting or whatever, and then there's always typical 5-year-old "disruptions". Just roll with it, and remember you're all there to have fun!