Scrapbooking with your kid is a great activity. It boosts his imagination while putting it to good use and will also create a stronger bond with him. If it is possible and your child wants to start a scrapbook, there is no reason why not to help him and guide him on this adventure. The biggest problem that appears is in finding a theme for the new album that will make him interested in scrapbooking. In most cases the one topic that is fun and appealing for children stands in family. Why not create a family scrapbook, one that your child builds with your help and not the other way around. Let us think about what you need to do in order to build a perfect family scrapbook with your kid.

Planning

Any scrapbook needs to be planned but when scrapbooking with your child you will need to look at things different. You will want to give most of the decision making choices to your child and only guiding him in making the right ones. If you do not like what he chose do not rule it out and encourage the kid in making a good family scrapbook album. You will need to talk about possible themes, colors used and go for a shopping trip. Let your kid decide what colors to use and purchase assorting elements that will eventually be added to the end product of his hard work. Purchase your kid his own materials! By doing so you will make a huge step towards making him interested in the project because he will feel a sense of ownership and will love working with the objects that are his own. It is actually quite similar to buying him a toy.

In order to create a scrapbook you will require pictures. Take out the family photos and allow the kid to choose the pictures that he wants to put in the album. Make this a decision that is all up to him as it is the most important decision that is to be made when building a scrapbook and your kid will love the power of making decisions. Another way to handle the problem is making new pictures. If you have a digital camera this will be a lot simpler and fun for your kid. Teach him how to use it and encourage the child to take as many pictures of family members as possible. One way to do this is to make it look like a game. Tell him that he is on a mission of gathering as many pictures as possible for the scrapbook project. Encourage him to take pictures of each family member and of more than one at once while also guiding him in not making thousands of pictures with the same topic. Tell him something like: “We need a picture of mommy washing the dishes.” or “We need 5 pictures of your brother and sister together playing”. By applying this approach you will not only get your kid interested but you will also guide him towards a direction of the scrapbook without him even realizing it. Once the new pictures are gathered look at them on your computer and have your kid decide which ones will remain and will be used. Print them and start the actual scrapbooking project.

Scrapbooking with your Kid

Now that we have everything we need, we can start the actual scrapbooking. The first step in doing this is teaching your child to cut pictures and different shapes. You can do this by training him with regular paper instead of actual photos. Draw out a line and encourage him to cut exactly on the line. Make it more complicated as he gets better. This way you will make sure that he will do a wonderful job at cutting different shapes to be glued later or in cutting out various elements from pictures, which are not needed in the scrapbook.

The next step is in teaching the kid how to properly glue paper and photos to cardboards. You can do this with ease by showing him how it is done. Do not neglect always letting him know that he should not swallow anything or pay attention that he does not glue his fingers as well with the photos. Teach him how to hold a photograph and how to properly gluing it to cardboard before starting scrapbooking.

Once training is complete you can let your kid start work on the actual scrapbooking project. Talk with him and let him decide the order of the pictures and the extra elements that are to be added. Do one page at a time and do not complicate things with your knowledge. It is highly important that every scrapbooking project you do with your kid is as simple as possible. Chose the colors for each element and encourage your child to draw something extra or add a few lines under each photo. Always keep in mind that you need to make it as fun as possible. If you see the child loosing enthusiasm the best thing you can do is stop the scrapbooking for the day and do something else with him like playing soccer or going out in the park. 15 minutes a day is more than enough for your child to dedicate to a new scrapbooking project.

The Finish

When all is done be sure to let your kid know that he did a wonderful job. Make fun of mommy and yourself when looking at the scrapbook while letting him know that it is a great picture. Praise your son’s efforts even if the end product was not as good as expected. Scrapbooking is learnt through scrapbooking and as time passes he will get better. You can slowly make him want to design different scrapbooks, based on more complicated themes. Once you did a Family album scrapbook everything is quite possible. You could start with a scrapbook for your dog next or whatever pleases the child and makes him want to continue. As time passes teach him advanced techniques and make sure that he is always having fun as this is by far the most important aspect when scrapbooking with kids. You are creating an album that is actually a memory while your child is just having fun and he will get to see the scrapbooks as great memories only after some years.