Graduation Scrapbook: Ideas for High School Graduation Memories

Does it seem like only yesterday that your child started kindergarten?  Now he’s graduating from high school and will soon start college in the fall.  It’s important to document your child’s high school years in a special graduation scrapbook.

Even if you already have a school scrapbooking album for your child, the high school years can fill an entire album.  You don’t need to use a large album unless you want to include professional senior portraits.  Otherwise, you can use a smaller format album.

Senior pictures are usually taken the summer before a student’s senior year.  Still, they deserve a page in a graduation album.  Use your favorite pose or the one used in the high school yearbook for your graduation scrapbook’s title page.

There are so many things you can include in a graduation scrapbook.  Save a copy of your child’s graduation announcement and showcase it on a page. Be sure to include cards and letters from friends and family, especially ones with graduation advice.  Write a letter to your child telling him your hopes and dreams for their future in any advice you wish you would have had when you graduated.

Highlight any special awards or honors that your child is receiving at the graduation ceremony.  Designed page layouts to highlight these accomplishments.  You may want to include the original certificates or make copies.

If your child is giving a speech at the graduation ceremony, take some photographs of the graduate preparing and practicing the speech.  Preserve his notes including any drafts and use them on a scrapbook page.

Check your local newspaper for coverage of the graduation ceremony.  Include clips and articles for a scrapbook page.  Make a copy of any congratulations announcements made in the newspaper.  Because newspaper articles fade over time, it’s important to make copies to preserve them.

Graduation is full of photo opportunities. Think about the photos you want in your child’s graduation scrapbook, and make a list before the celebration starts.  Pictures of the ceremony are important, but so are photos of your child with his friends, family and teachers.

Mementos of high school graduates should include the program from the graduation ceremony.  Try to preserve more than one copy to use on a graduation scrapbook page to show both the cover and the inside as much as possible.

Take lots of candid shots during graduation parties.  You may not be attending some of these parties.  So be sure to send along a camera with your graduate and plan to exchange photos with his friends, too.  You’ll have a lot more photos to choose from if you share them.

You may want to include a copy of your graduate’s final report card or grade transcripts.  A nice complement to this would be a copy of the acceptance letter to the college he plans to attend.

For the final page of the graduation scrapbook, create a special page layout highlighting a photograph of your child leaving for college.  You could even place a picture of your child on his first day of kindergarten next to a graduation photograph.

It’s easy to create a graduation scrapbook.  It will soon become a family heirloom.  Keep it simple, and remember the most important thing is to scrapbook and document your graduate’s special day.