How to Document the School Years with Pocket Pages

Hey there, Catherine here. In this month’s post I’m sharing some thoughts on documenting the academic years for my kiddos as well as a couple of simple layouts I’ve included in this project.

There’s never a bad time to start documenting your kids’ school years, even if they’re well into them (or even out of the house!).

I hope over the next couple of months I can share how simple this project can be so that if you don’t have a plan for how to document the school years, maybe you’ll be empowered to create one.

The layout shown in this post is from our older son’s school years album, which is just a 12×12 inch pocket page album.

One page is a 12×12 timeline, which I created using the Timeline Layered Templates and School Years Word Art. I’m hoping this will be a staple for each year – I absolutely love this template!

The other is a very simple layout documenting the first day of school, which always seems to have lots of pictures! I used a few 4×6 photos, a couple of cards from Liz’s Project Life Core Kit (the Everyday Edition), Back to School Templates, and Back to School Journal Cards.

It seems that most of us parents of school-aged youngsters have a stash of school work, report cards, handwriting samples, and the like hidden somewhere in a closet or bin, perhaps even hanging on the walls of our homes.

I’d love someday to have one (maybe two) albums for each of my sons documenting their entire school experience, from preschool up through the end of high school.

Here’s an overview of how I approach documenting the kids’ school years.

The Format

I’m using one pocket page album for each of our two boys to document their school years.

While the minimalist in me would love to document these years in just ONE album for each kid, the reality is that the photos and memorabilia from these years will probably spill over into more than one album.

Each kid gets their own album to start, and I’ll add another album when the time comes. But I’m trying to keep it really minimal.

Why pocket pages?

Two big reasons, really.

One is that I can add to them over time, as opposed to saving tons of stuff then putting it all together when they’re done with school.

The other reason is that it’s easy to include physical artifacts, like artwork, writing samples, and certificates, as well as photos and journaling. I just like the flexibility of a pocket page album. It’s really easy to add to over time.

What to include?

I’m trying to be pretty chill about the format. Again, the minimalist in me would love a really tight format so that it’s the same for every year. But I know my design preferences will shift over the years, and I’m okay with each year looking a little different.

However, there are a few things I hope to include for each year:

Their school photo
Pictures from the first day of school
A photo from the last day of school
Any sports photos that are relevant for that year
Major milestones met that year or a timeline
A photo with their teacher
A photo with friends
Some journaling about the year from my perspective

There’s so much you could include in this project, but my primary goal is to keep these albums really simple.

In the end, I hope to have one place where we can flip through an album (maybe two) and see the progression of each of our sons over time. That means keeping the layouts for each year to a minimum – this is not the album for a week-by-week look at the school year!

No, the goal for me is to include just a snapshot of the year, an overview of their life that year, plus some of the artifacts that might be important to all of us once these years have come and gone.