Ideas for creating/preserving memories of your children growing up

[DitaVonCheese]

Evening all :) I'm the editor of my local NCT newsletter and am just putting together our spring edition. I have a (stock) article about different ways of preserving memories of your kids growing up eg memory box, making a quilt of favourite baby clothes, handprints, what to do with the art mountain etc but would like to add a few new ones to make it a bit more original. Does anyone have any good ideas of things they do which they are happy to share?

Thanks in advance :)

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Every few years, when I remember or someone gets inspired we get out the video cam and do 7-up style interviews.

Any ideas gratefully received! I am a bit lacking in inspiration - though cat you've just reminded me that one thing I have done (or nearly finished!) is put all our video clips on a DVD.

If it helps, other ideas from NCT editors so far are:

• photo of child holding a cut out number on each birthday
• those handprint tea towels from school
• memory box
• photo books
• "a 'happy' book which details all the things that they say that make me laugh and all the things they do that make me proud or smile"

I have done nothing particularly interesting for DD (I have yet to fill in very many pages of her baby book and she's 2.5 ) so other suggestions are much appreciated :)

Oh, X-posted Himalaya - love that idea!

I am currently 20 weeks pg with my first and just found out that I am expecting a little girl. I painted the nursery a while back a neutral colour that we could go girly or boyish with and one of the things I have for the room is a big canvas that I plan to put on the chimney breast and what I'm going to do is paint it one block colour all over, probably pink and then when little one is here I am going to do a paint print of her tiny hands in a contrasting colour starting in the top left corner of the canvas. Plan to do a handprint/footprint every few months to show how they have grown and keep a list on the back of dates and age when the prints were done.
So hopefully what will start off as a very plain picture at first will be nice and full in a few years.

This is kind of the other way around but I bought tiny books for each child and filled them with quotations/star sign descriptions/film quotes/etc for each child.

It was like my memories for them that made each child know they were special that they could keep forever.

I even spent hours searching for 2 4 leaf clovers in the garden one summer and stuck them in each little book.

We also make regular family movies and dh edits them really well and puts them to cool music. We get them out to watch now and again and the kids love them.

Tiny - nice idea, but be warned that they get a bit tricky to get nice clean handprints from after the first few months...we have more of a smear in our baby book at one year old .

Definitely the video clips of them is the way to go - 2yo DS loves seeing the clips of himself, and there is no substitute for actually being able to see how they moved and sounded at the different stages.

I keep a diary for each of my 3 DS. I don't necessarily write everyday but I record birthdays, Christmas, first day at school etc and also funny things they say or do or write about how much I love them (mushy I know but I can't help it)

I just use ordinary notebooks which I decorate with stickers and their name, I started the diaries when pregnant with them and am still going strong. I love reading through them and am going to give them to the boys when they are older hopefully they will want them!

I have started to think this is especially important since losing my Mum a couple of years ago and realising that they are big gaps in what I know about my history and babyhood.

When children start playgroup/nursery/school, have always ordered a print when they had the school photo taken (both individual and class ones, fortunately these are done at different times of the year!). These are then put in an album straight away (or perhaps current one goes on show in a frame before being put in an album). Now that DCs are 14 and 10, I have 2 lovely albums of their progress through schools.

Also get them to draw a Christmas picture every year and laminate this, to get out the following year to use a table mats (or even just look at).

In the last few years have also got mine to write a list of what they hope to achieve next year.

Last 2 items generate more stuff to keep, but nice to set the same "task" each year and have them to look back at.

(Sorry OP that these may be a bit too old for the age group you are primarily dealing with?)

we do photo books a lot.

big hardback ones every 2 years or so - family snaps etc.

any special occasion gets on of it's own. I use the bonusprint softback ones fro the dds to have to flick through by themselves.

also, got dd2 one of these last year. so now each holiday gets it's own journal kept - I use a pogo printer to pick 2/3 pictures of each day, and write up what we did/where we went/what we saw etc. only takes 20 mins or so each day, and the dds really love looking back through them (and is fab for dd1 to take into school as a communicaiton tool - she is severe ASD and has a langugae delay, but this really helps her talk to her teachers about what she did on holiday)

dd2 is 4, and probably next holiday I will get her involved in writing somethign/sticking stuff in/drawing a picture of what we did. sort of a scrapbook and photobook combined.

I've kept a diary since PG with first DC, but only write in it once or twice a year now, and I will have to at some point make a decision on who gets to keep them.

I've also planned to make them photobooks, but never got round to it. Ditto doing something with the video clips, they are all on the computer but not organised in any way.

I do make a scrapbook every year for each of them of their school bits and bobs, and keep all their other certificates etc in a box file for them, also first shoes, newspaper from the day they were born and a few other bits are kept.

They love looking at their baby photos and asking about things they did when they were younger, I do wonder how much I actually recorded in the diaries that is nice like that, they tended to be more factual, like what they were eating.

DS used to make lots of little mispronounciations, he likes hearing about those now.

We have a height chart which we measure them on every Christmas.

Just take a photo of them on the first day of every month = 12 photos a year and easy to remember to do