Your students are a part of history! Get it in writing and get it published as a keepsake!
Teachers, who else gets excited each year when their Student Treasures Publishing Kit arrives?
This is something that I cherish each year! My own children have several of these beautiful hardback books that make a sweet sweet keepsake. They are beautifully designed.
Each year in my class students write a page about their favorite part of kindergarten. All of their pages and illustrations are put together by this amazing company, Student Treasures. The students create the cover, title page, dedication page, as well as their individual writings and illustrations. Students and Parents love this end of the year project because its a keepsake that lasts forever!
I know that this year ended so abruptly and I’m sure that projects like this seem to be a task too hard to accomplish with getting used to remote learning and juggling all that comes with our new normal. But you and your students are missing out if you aren’t getting a kit of your own!
This is a project that will allow your class or group of friends to share their experiences during their school year with each other. The best part is that the kit is FREE! GET YOUR FREE KIT HERE!
This year, I am using my kit to publish a book with a group of friends from afar! Kids from several families have done a fun project together that we want to have as a keepsake! They are going to publish a collaborative story that they wrote together using a shared Google Doc. You can see my older post on how to do write a Collaborative Story here.
We also are planning to use this book to document facts, thoughts, and our feelings as we have gone through this pandemic together. I can’t think of a better idea for how to capture and remember what happened in history. This could be a place to document all the good that came from the 2020 quarantine.
Classroom teachers, this could be a nice place for you to include a handwritten letter to your class about how you felt when your year so quickly came to an end.
How to use your publishing kit when you aren’t with your students each day!
Ways to get the materials to your students (or friends)?
For our group, we are getting our materials using the first idea listed below. This way nobody has to leave the comfort of their own home. See ideas below for getting the materials to your group.
- Upload the Writing and Illustration page from the Student Treasures website. You can do this here. You simply give your parents the link and they can print the correct papers right off the website. Their child can begin writing and illustrating right away!
- Student Work Pick Up– If your school is not doing everything digitally, they may already have a process in place for passing out student work. You could just include these pages in your student’s materials.
- Special Delivery– This may take a little more effort, but you could drop the materials in your students mailboxes. I know this sounds crazy, but if you are like me, you may have already just gotten in your car to take a daily drive. It may actually get your students really exciting about the project knowing it’s a “special delivery”!
Decide what to write.
There are step by step instructions in your Publishing Kit, however Student Treasures provides writing tips here. You can write a summary of your year, choose a topic your students already wrote about, or you could use this as an opportunity to let your students write about their thoughts and feelings about school being closed the first time in history due to a pandemic.
Many teachers have already assigned a writing assignment about the topic of finishing the school year from home. Both of my school age kids have written an opinion piece titled: In your opinion do you like school at school or school at home? This would be the perfect topic for your book. I love the idea of our kids having history in a published and bound book that they can keep forever.
Little tips I’ve learned throughout the years of using these kits…
My process and favorite supplies!
- Students should write and draw in pencil first so that they can erase if needed.
- Next, they trace their pencil marks on the writing page with an ultra fine tip black sharpie. They can erase visible pencil marks if they’d like.
- The illustration page needs to be colored with washable markers. These thin washable markers are my kids favorite and really work great! After my first year creating one of these books, I realized that if you don’t have skin colored markers, many kids will choose orange as a skin color…LOL, I know it’s crazy but true. These multi-cultural markers work great for coloring people.
You can recommend that your parents use these materials, but let’s be realistic, each family has different materials and resources at home. It will be ok if the suggested materials aren’t used. Some families may not even get the project page turned in. It’s ok! We all know that our parents are doing all they can, but most are trying to get through the day getting their own work done. Even if the projects are not completed the same way that you would have done them in your classroom, the students who order them will still cherish them forever.
Ways to collect the materials?
This part could be a little challenging, but let’s be honest…if parents want this beautiful keepsake and want their child’s work to be included, they will complete it and get it to you.
In our group, we have one parent that is going to do the collecting. We have chosen a date and she is going to get the work from the other families. The parent will then get all of the materials to me so that I can organize the kit and send it in to the publishers.
- Teacher Collects the Materials– again, go out for a nice drive and pick up the materials yourself. You could have your parents place the work in their mailbox.
- Material Drop off date and time– Just like some schools are driving through (without even getting out of their cars) to pick up learning packets and materials, they could drive through and drop them off to you. Choose a location, date, and time. Wear your mask and gloves. Stand outside and wait for them to come!
Once you have all the materials it’s simple! The directions are all in your packet!
You guys, this is seriously the best keepsake! If you’ve never done one, you will love it. It is much easier when you are all in class together, but I think we have all learned that none of this whole situation has been easy! We can still make learning fun and meaningful for our students and kids.
It is projects like this, that will stay with them forever! Not the digital learning, virtual meetings and thick packets of handouts.
There you have it…a project worth the work!
Feel free to use this post to share with parents how they should look and what the process looks like. I have created a publishing checklist that your students could use while they are creating their pages. You are welcome to print it from my freebies page of this site.
Comment below to share how you have made memorable and meaningful projects similar to this one happen even when you aren’t with your students each day.