Pieces of a Life
By John W. Healy

My sister, my friend. Amanda (left) and Dawn (right) collaborated on a family scrapbook for their grandfather.

Those of us fortunate enough to have a sister or brother have been given the gift of a lifetime. While the relationship between siblings may have moments of conflict and turmoil over the span our lives, many of us can look back and say it was all worth it.

Sibling relationships can also be the source of cooperative art projects that encourage children at different levels to work productively together. Creating art together strengthens sibling bonds through self-expression. Art is a non-competitive subject area that can help to establish a level playing field.

A personal gift
Twelve-year-old Amanda and her sister, 16-year-old Dawn, shared with me a special present they gave to their grandfather upon his retirement. The girls considered buying him a gift, yet that seemed not to be as meaningful or enjoyable as creating an art project together.

In his bedroom drawer and in a box under his bed, they found hundreds of family photographs that spanned generations. These photographs seemed an ideal starting point for creating an art project. A poster with a few photos wouldn't even begin to make use of the wealth of photographs, so the sisters agreed to make a family scrapbook with their grandfather as the central figure.

Amanda and Dawn placed photos of their grandfather at the center of most of the pages in the scrapbook. Photos of the other family members were arranged around him, in a visual display of family closeness and support. Positioning the photographs in a linear way wouldn't have expressed the care that the family feels for each other. Each photograph showed a special moment in a family member's life, organized in such a way that the scrapbook became the history of Amanda and Dawn's family.

The girls' grandfather loved the gift, of course. It was so personal and meaningful, and Amanda and Dawn had taken a great deal of time and care to make sure it came out exactly right. The scrapbook was like a gift for the entire family, including generations yet to come.

Planning a scrapbook
A scrapbook can be a fun, meaningful art project for your students. It's a great project to start at the end of the school year, so kids can add to their scrapbooks during summer break.

I start our scrapbook project by asking my students to bring in photographs of their families, their friends and activities in which they're involved. The photographs may be arranged in a scrapbook in any number of ways: chronological, activity oriented, centered on a particular family member, groups of pictures of the family's house, hometown, family business, pictures of travel and vacations – the possibilities are endless.

To augment the photographs in the scrapbook, I have the children bring in items that represent their families and interests, such as postcards of places to which they have traveled; ribbon, wrapping paper or wallpaper; leaves or other organic matter that can be pressed in the book. We also consider brief, well-chosen words to accompany the images. Poetry and prose quotations can be very useful.

Get ideas for scrapbook pages by paging through an issue of Creating Keepsakes.

An abundance of ideas
Materials and tools for such a project are amazingly varied. Here are just a few of the things students can use to enhance their scrapbooks: paper in different colors and textures, scissors that cut decorative edges, rubber stamps that create lettering and images, paper punches that cut fun shapes, templates that help draw perfect geometric shapes and stickers relating to any activity you can think of.

If you and your students begin to feel overwhelmed, you may want to look at a copy of Creating Keepsakes magazine (www.creatingkeepsakes.com), which focuses on how to design and assemble scrapbook pages. Just one issue of the magazine will give you and your class plenty of ideas.

After doing the scrapbook lesson with my students, I found myself looking through a family album my mother made in 1925, when she was about the same age as Amanda and Dawn. It's amazing that so many of us feel the need to capture an impression of our families in a scrapbook. Creating a scrapbook about our heritage is a wonderful way to give meaning to our experiences, to take pride in our families and to express ourselves artistically.

Dr. John W. Healy teaches art at Woodland Middle School, East Meadow, NY.