Last Friday I attended the Mother’s Day tea in Kara’s kindergarten class. Kara greeted me at the door and gave me a handmade bouquet of paper flowers.

me and my sweet girl at the Mother’s Day tea

During the Mother’s Day tea, Kara’s teacher passed out the personal yearbooks that I had created for each child to each mom. I got the idea for the personal yearbooks from Becky Higgins years ago.

all 18 personal yearbooks that I completed this school year

The personal yearbooks were a surprise for both the kids and the parents. The front page of each book had an individual photo of the each child in August and one in May. Each child also wrote their first name underneath the photos in August and May. It was fun to see how the handwriting changed over the year.

Kara’s front page

The yearbooks contained a page for each month of the school year. Monthly pages had an individual photo of the student and journaling about the photo. I wrote the journaling based on interviews that I conducted monthly.

Kara’s November page

The last page was a photo of the student and the teacher with a handwritten note from the teacher. Each page was printed on white cardstock and had a 2 inch piece of scrapbook paper along the top of the page.

I estimate that it took me about 5 – 6 hours to complete the pages for these 18 personal yearbooks each month. This included taking/editing/printing the photos as well as interviewing and printing out the pages with the journaling. When I saw how much the moms and the kids enjoyed looking at the personal yearbooks I knew that all my efforts were definitely worth it. There were even some heartfelt thank yous and tears from the other moms.

I am looking forward to doing the personal yearbooks again next year for BOTH of my children’s classes.