Do you think your kids would enjoy scrapbooking? I keep seeing websites for crop moms, scrappin’ moms and so many moms who love scrapbooking. I wonder if all those croppin’ moms ever tried scrapbooking with their children? Having a fun activity all planned out for kids (to get them away from the TV or video games for a while) can be difficult! Kids usually act like they don’t want to do an activity – but once you get started, they usually end up loving the creativity – and scrapbooking is fun.

If you’ve never tried scrapbooking with your kids, here are some tips.

Get the basic scrapbook supplies needed for the activity (paper, glue, scissors, albums or binders). There are many scrapbook albums with kid’s themes. You could find an album for each child (there are sports scrapbook albums, Disney scrapbook albums, and scrapbook kits for kids have similar themes to use for ideas. If you want to make one large family album, have everyone share ideas as a group and give each child their own page to personalize. Mini-scrapbook albums are another option to use for your kid’s scrapbook activity.

You may decide to make a limited number of your scrapbooking supplies available for the kids to use. Depending upon the ages of the children involved, you might limit their use of your specialty papers or more expensive scrapbooking materials. Some moms just make all their supplies available. It’s something you should plan ahead of time – which of your supplies do you want to use in this scrapbooking activity.

Children’s Scrapbooking Activity Time Tips:

Tip 1: Have Fun

Make it an easy going fun time. Things don’t have to look perfect in these scrapbook albums – allow the kids to be creative. See if your kids can come up with some ideas on their own for them to devleop their innate creativity.

Tip 2: Scrapbooking Tools and Materials

Supervise the use of any sharp tools or remove the ones that are dangerous from the available supplies. When using any tools that could be dangerous or have anything sharp on them, show them how to use them properly or tell them that only you will be using those.

Tip 3: Get Organized before You Start

Sort out your supplies in advance. Keep photo corners, pens, stickers, paper, glue and other materials easy to use by sorting them in storage containers or trays.

Tip 4: Photos for the Scrapbook

Have some photos selected and ready to use. You may want to use extra prints of photographs so the ones you are planning on using yourself won’t be used.

Tip 5: Stickers, Rub-ons and Embellishments

Guide them with their choices of what supplies make for a good scrapbook, such as Disney stickers, rub ons, rubber stamping materials, etc. You may even want to buy some scrapbook kits with specific artistic themes (holidays, birthdays, pets, boy themes or girl themes) for them to use.

Tip 6: Writing and Journaling 

Show the kids how to write their own notes or captions (introduce them to journaling). Having some colorful pens to use can make this even more fun. Kids who like to draw can add their own drawings to the scrapbook layout. Make sure you have them create a page with their name, the date and other personal information. Keeping the date the scrapbook was made will be of interest to them in later years.

Tip 7: Set Some Activity Time Rules

Keep drinks and food away from your activity area. Food and drinks could ruin your expensive collection of supplies.

If you have teenagers who love computers, think about having them learn about digital scrapbooking – they may like computer scrapbooking as much or more than playing those video games!

Spending this quality time is a great way to bond with your kids and help them learn how much fun it is to be creative. They might come to love scrapbooking as a hobby as much as you do!