First Day of School: I'm Behind Already

L: First Grade (top), Kindergarten (below)

I really should have known better. Over the summer I had grand plans for Olivia. We would complete her Summer Bridge Workbook, practice handwriting & reading daily, and memorize the 1-10 math facts as suggested by her Principal. Oh, and sight words too. (Where are those sight words anyway?)  We managed to get halfway through the Summer Bridge Workbook, which really was excellent by the way. I'll definitely purchase it again next year, but I'll try to be more realistic in our academic goals. And really, isn't summer for relaxing and having fun? I certainly think summer is an ideal time for keeping up with basic skills, I definitely don't want to her spend the first few months just catching up. But we had fun this summer nonetheless! No fancy vacations or road trips (see note regarding lack of job). There was lots of swimming, using our super-cheap Busch Gardens annual passes, VBS and hanging out with friends to be had however.

One of my goals was to finish Olivia's Kindergarten scrapbook. Oops, did I just write finish? I meant to write START! So, here I sit, both children at school, job-hunting done for the day, staring at the 568 digital photos related to kindergarten that are safely tucked away in iPhoto. How do I organize these photos, and the stacks of school papers and artwork into a nice album that I won't be tempted to throw in 10 years because it's so large?

I'm going to start with organizing the photos by event. First Day of School, School Program, Field Day, etc. I'm then setting up albums separately for each event that I want to create layouts for (this sounds like more work than it is). Than I can put in only the pictures I want to print, and they should come out in chronological order. I'm also going to add some pages about her teacher, and the building itself (which is beautiful and historic in its own right).

The tricky part is the paperwork & artwork we accumulated. I had a marathon sorting event last week, and have managed to sort the papers into a nice neat 2" stack and the artwork into a 6" stack. At this point I'm loathe to throw anything away, "just in case." How do I get over that? What are the things that I'll really wish I would have saved? And what are the things I won't care about?

I have almost nothing from my own school years, and I think maybe that's why I'm so obsessive about preserving their memories now. I probably wouldn't be any happier if I had full scrapbooks from childhood, but I feel like it would be a nice thing to have. And I'd like to at least have something for my girls, should they decide they want to revisit these memories in the future.

I'm open to any tips, links, etc that you might have for me on organizing and completing school scrapbooks. I've been searching the internet and haven't found a whole lot that's impressed me. Do you have favorite papers or product lines? Do you have layout sketches you love? Is there a book I should read?

If you've gotten this far - thanks so much! And if you are like me, working on sorting out a school scrapbook, please follow along. I'll cover my progress as I go. I'm still making cards as well, and I'll showing some Halloween cards soon!