From the time our babies are born until they become active adults, they are full of change. So how do you remember all the cute things they would say and the fun things they liked as they get older and ask questions about their younger years?
Traditions play a big part in how kids grow up, what they know and what they pass on to their kids. So make it a tradition to start a birthday memory book for your kids and carry it on through your grandkids too.
Some parents don’t start them until the child is old enough to answer the questions all themselves, but it is more complete and really fun to start it on the first birthday and not the third. You could even put the book on display at each party for the guests to read and know your child even better!
What you need:
- A scrapbook with plastic protector pages, enough to do 18 years. So 20 pages should do just fine.
- Decorative scrapbook paper, various colors and sizes
- Glue and sticky dots
- Numerical stickers, flat or raised
- Alphabet stickers, flat or raised
- Any punches you might want or other embellishments for pages
- Your print outs of the questions, 18 of them (if you are starting on birthday number one)
Fill the protectors with papers once you decorate them to your desired look. You can print stickers with the child’s name, put “happy birthday”, or just put the number of years they are turning. The other page just needs the questions slid inside. You will be asking the same questions every year to see how their tastes and likes change over their life. You might add something to this effect inside the front cover as a note or message to the child.
In case you are curious about what types of questions to ask, think back to when you were young and the things that you liked so much then that might have changed the older you got.
Some examples are:
- What is your favorite color?
- What is your favorite toy?
- What is your favorite fruit?
- Who is your best friend?
- What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?
- What is your favorite holiday?
And so on. You can ask as many or as few as you would like, but 20 questions fills a page rather well.
Setting traditions are important for families and the first birthday party is a giant milestone for kids and for parents. Find a new tradition to start with your own family and mix that with some of the old ones from generations past. And if you are looking for a unique gift, this will be a big hit!
Jenny Franklin loves planning children’s parties and making kids’ dreams come true. When she’s not planning parties, she does some blogging and writes for the party supplier www.1stbirthdayparty.com.
