These scrapbooks are great for snapshots, postcards, ticket stubs, camp photos, and other items that will bring back memories of all the good times.

The Scrapbook
Kids can use a hard-cover scrapbook, a spiral-bound notebook, or make their own book with construction paper, binding it with yarn or staples.

Encourage the kids to decorate the book with stickers, camp emblems, or a collage of summertime scenes they draw themselves or cut from magazines. They can draw pictures on the covers with colorful markers or crayons.

Start the book with an introduction page summarizing your summer plans, the friends you will spend time with, and the events you are most eagerly anticipating.

Older kids can write this themselves; younger children will want to dictate it.

Special Pages
Designate individual pages in the scrapbook for your friends' autographs, day trips, visits with grandparents, and other special days to come. Make a birthday page, listing the special birthdays that fall during the summer months.

Set aside pages for your favorite summer activities. If you particularly like sailing, swimming, playing kickball, or flying kites, decorate pages for these activities. Fill them in later with photos, written memories, and mementos.

If you and your family are going on a summer vacation, set aside a number of pages for the trip. Decorate the edges of the pages with pictures of the upcoming vacation. Do this by drawing them yourself, cutting out photos and illustrations from magazines, or taking them off the Internet.

For instance, if you're going to Disneyworld, find some pictures of Mickey or the Magic Kingdom. If you're going to a lake or a beach, locate some images that connote those places. A trip to the mountains? Easy!

Other ideas for pages include ones for each of your friends. List their favorite activities, special characteristics, and funny habits. Try to get a photo of each one to paste on their page.

You can also make pages for your favorite summer foods. How about a page dedicated to ice cream? Hamburgers? Picnics?

Dress It Up
Paste photographs in the scrapbook as you get rolls of film developed or print them off the computer. Use tape, glue sticks, craft glue, or, for a fancier effect, adhesive picture corners. The adhesive corners are colorful and stick right on the page. The little pocket corners hold photos in place.

Decorate the rim of the page or any portion of it with glitter. Spray glue where you want the glitter and then sprinkle the shiny stuff over it. Or use glitter glue.

Attach ribbons and cut-out stars and other shapes to the pages to give them style and interest.

Use colorful pens to write captions and label items. Be as creative with your words as with your graphics. Everyone will love reading short poems or a description of a day in the sun!

Paste as You Go
These scrapbooks are fun to create as the summer progresses. Kids might like to set aside the time just before bed to update them, or a special time each week for scrapbook work.

Or, if they prefer, they can collect items all summer, store them in a shoebox or large envelope and create the scrapbook at the end of vacation.

Keep these precious books and when the winter winds howl, pull them out and relive the glorious days of a fun-filled summer!

If kids make these every summer, they will have a wonderful record of some the best days of their childhood.