Handprint Calendar

When I taught kindergarten the gift I made every year with my students for their families was always a handprint calendar. I had to make some shortcuts because I was producing twenty or so a year. I would cut construction paper down to fit in a copy machine and print out pages with the poem and clip art already on it. Then I would print out blank copies of each month's grid on white copy paper and glue on the back with glue stick. It's very important to use "dry" glue, as white school glue would leave creases and sometimes lighten the color the backside of the construction paper. I always got great compliments on the calendars and some parents carefully took them apart and laminated them at a copy store so they could be used for more than one year and other used them as date books to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries. However they used them they let me know they became very important mementos which made the hefty time investment worth it to me.

I haven't made this with ER yet, but plan to when she gets a little older. Right now we make Shutterfly photo calendars each year for the grandparents. A scrapbooker could easily recreate the calendar using color cardstock paper. The poems could still be printed onto the paper and either clip art or other embellishments such as thematic stickers or 3D stickers like Jolee's by EK Success would look cute. The calendar pages could be created on a computer program printed out with the dates already on them and with special events noted. We had a comb binding machine at school that I used but a copy store can do it too. I used clip art and fonts by DJ Inkers the poems are from various sources. Below are the month from January to December.