Hi everyone! It’s Catherine here. Today I’m sharing a pocket page layout and some ideas for documenting a school year. As the mom to 1- and 4-year old boys, I’m quite new to the whole school thing. Last year, our older son attended preschool for the first time. Three days a week, he came home laden with handouts, announcements, papers and art projects. I saved it all and tackled it at the end of the year, photographing lots, scanning some, tossing most and documenting the rest through a few layouts in a pocket page album. This year, I’m determined to make progress throughout the year since we’ll be moving (again) in December.

I don’t intend to complete a layout for specific time periods (every week or month, say), but rather create a few layouts that provide a snapshot of this year of preschool. I started this year with the layout I’m sharing today, which documents his first week or so. It’s an introduction to the year, so it got a full layout plus an insert.

Here’s the full layout:

And here it is with the insert flipped:

I started with the large picture of a door at Ben’s school, which is at an historic church in our town, cropped it to 12×12 and cut it into six 4×6 photos. I took it on my older iPhone, so it isn’t the greatest photo, but I thought the subject was so striking that I wanted to include it. This is a family album, after all! Perfection is overrated. The “school” text and most of the other design elements you see throughout this layout are from class in session.

If I’m trying to get a photo of one of the boys looking at the camera these days, I usually set up the shot and then snap away. I tend to get one clear picture and a bunch that aren’t so great. In this case, I had several I loved, which I knew I wanted to include in an insert. I used a template from 4×6 photo templates vol. 5 and made it a 5×7 in Photoshop to create the collage. I dropped in five of the photos and added the globe to the template.

Then I printed the “learn” text on a piece of white cardstock, trimmed it to 8×10 and adhered the photo.

The flip side of the insert is the item Ben brought home on his first day of school. I wanted to include it because we’re in a loving-construction-trucks phase, so the fact that Ben “liked playing with the backhoes best” really captures his interests today. Plus, I’d photographed him playing with them at drop-off that morning! I trimmed the edges and dropped the original paper into the 8×10 pocket.

On the right side, I used elements from class in session and templates from pictures and words no. 6 to add bits of journaling and design. Again, the photos aren’t necessarily the best quality, but they really capture the moment: a (blurry) pic of Ben and his teacher, a rather dark pic of us standing by his cubby, a shot of the ceiling in the school, of Ben playing at a sensory bin filled with sand and – of course – the construction trucks in rice! For me, the goal of these albums is to really tell the story of our family at this moment, to include photos that will help us remember and recall those little details.

The photos on this page are a mix of indoor classroom shots and outdoor pics taken at the park after school. His cousins happened to be in town that week, so I had to include Ben’s partner-in-crime in a shot.

The last photo in the layout had plenty of negative space, so I added a bit of text to kind of sum up our first week of the school year. I’m a fan of long-form journaling in these albums, but sometimes a little text goes a long way.

There are so many ways to approach documenting a school year, but I’m loving the mix of inserts, photos and journaling I can include with pocket pages. Items are corralled in one place and I can create a few layouts for the year that really capture this moment in our son’s life. In the end, I hope to have a couple of 12×12 albums that document each of our boys’ school careers.

If you’re a parent, how are you documenting these school years?

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You can find more of my work here and follow me on my blog, on Instagram or see what’s inspiring me on Pinterest.

Products used: class in session, 4×6 photo templates vol. 5, pictures and words no. 6 and pocket pages from Project Life.