Scrapbooking, Writing & Holidays

Writing should be an integral part of our lives!
Why not include it in your holiday activities?

As I ponder how we will spend the upcoming holiday weeks, I am reminded of the educational value of scrapbooking. In the past I have written about ideas you can use to teach your children writing and art techniques as you scrapbook. Since we enjoy scrapbooking so much, I plan to have my children make some scrapbook gifts this week. For many of the pages they create, they will be writing a paragraph about that page. Of course, I will use Excellence in Writing to work through the writing process by developing a brief outline, writing a rough draft and editing their paragraph for stylistic techniques and possible errors. If your children are having a hard time deciding what to write about, make a list of ideas with them.

To improve your artistic layouts, I would recommend Creative Sketches 2. It is filled with sketches Becky herself uses to design unique scrapbook layouts. The book is organized according to how many pictures you will have on a layout.

Writing can take many forms throughout the holidays. I love to hear what everyone is doing. Reading Christmas letters is a special treat in our house. Do you send out a Christmas letter updating your friends and family? Let your children help you write your letter. For the several years, our children are co-authors of our Christmas letter. When they were younger, they simply wrote sentences about events they enjoyed. Now, they are writing a paragraph about one of their favorite memories of the year and one of the lessons God has taught them this past year. You can use Excellence in Writing's unit on creative writing to develop a well-written paragraph. We are writing a New Year's letter this year as we take a look back at 2005.

One last idea is to have your children write down their favorite memories about the holidays. One year I asked them several questions about the holidays and had each one write down their answers. I am keeping those answers in their journals. Won't it be fun to look back and see what they thought was important in 2005?

Kerry