Treasures in time, those objects, memories, and photographs that are valued because they connect us to another time, past and present, are always “in the making.” Our future all too soon becomes the present, and the present, our past.
Without some planning and thinking, the times we treasure now, the photographs, the memories, the objects, can be so easily lost. Family photograph albums are an excellent way of keeping these memories and pictures safe and available to enjoy. Two other wonderful ways of keeping treasures in time are scrapbooks and home movies or videos.
Scrapbooks (I don’t know why they are called “scrap” books) can be as simple or as elaborate as the maker chooses. Many older students keep memory books of their high school years, brides keep their special books, and mothers keep baby books (at least for the first child). Included in these books is everything that will fit and anything of interest to the keeper.
Making such books can be a wonderful activity with young children and need not be expensive. Even discarded catalogues can be recycled into scrapbooks — all the pages will be covered, anyway, or a loose-leaf binder with blank sheets works well: the cover can be decorated to suit the owner. Young children treasure their “work,” their drawings and early attempts at printing, and a scrapbook is a wonderful place to store and value those efforts. Scrapbooks become a chronicle of life and looking through books about you is always interesting.
Making family movies is another important way to keep special memories. Long before there were video cameras, family “home movies” were a way of recording weddings, birthdays, first prom dates, Boy Scout activities, etc.
Video cameras make “moving pictures” easy. For special times, if you don’t own a video camera, try renting one. The joy your family will experience from watching themselves and reliving the time will far outweigh any expense. Your children will not only enjoy watching themselves, they can learn from your picture taking that you value their experiences and activities enough to record them.
The trick with videos, as with other photographic records, is to keep up with them, to date them, and to store them so they may be easily enjoyed.
What do young children learn from your keeping their treasures? The first thing they learn is that they are important and their work is “valuable” enough to keep. They begin to take pride in their accomplishments because they are valued. Children also learn that adults and other family members have been children in another time.
This may seem simple, but younger siblings have never known older brothers and sisters as “babies.” Photographs and videos let children know they can expect to grow and provide a sort of “map” for that growth. The greatest treasure families have is their children: keepsakes, scrapbooks, pictures, movies, and memories remind them just how special they are to us.
