This post has been written in collaboration with BonusPrint

My eldest son E started a new milestone in his Education in September – he started Secondary School. I still can’t quite believe I have a child old enough to be in Year 7. It doesn’t seem like it was two minutes ago that he was heading into Primary School. Despite not knowing anyone when he started Reception (his nursery friends all went to a different school) he went on to make a tight-knit group of friends. There have been lots of memorable moments from his 7 years at Primary school: Assemblies, Sports Days, Dress-up days, school trips and the curveball of the pandemic thrown into the mix last year as well.

Still, the school did their best to give the Year 6 leavers the best send-off they could under the circumstances. There was an End of Year School Production, a leavers assembly and an organised festival day in replacement of the cancelled Residential trip. I also took it upon myself to organise designing and creating a Leaver’s Yearbook for his class to have a keepsake of their time at the school. Cue, digging out all the school photos. Being the snap-happy mum that I am, I was able to find photos dating all the way back to when he first started and it brought back all the memories!

Keepsake memories from Primary School

It was bittersweet for E to leave Primary school, although if I’m honest I shed more tears than he did! Whilst he felt sad about leaving, he was more than excited and ready for Secondary school and to take that next step into being more dependent. In addition to his Leaver’s Yearbook, I wanted to document his last few weeks of Primary school. In this digital age, we’re all so used to taking photos and just keeping them on our phones but what about having them for the future? I want E to be able to show his children and even Grandchildren his time at school. This is one of the main reasons I chose to print out photos to put into an album.

As well as printing photos, I am going to take a look at creating a Photo Book to document his entire Primary school life. That way, along with his Leaver’s Yearbook, he will have this to refer back to in years to come.

The next step and future memories

E has only been at secondary school for just six weeks, but he’s really enjoying it so far and has already made some new friends. He’s thrown himself into after school Athletics Club and is slowly getting used to the homework load.

Although it’s a big change compared to Primary school, I still plan to document his time there as and when I can, so hopefully by the end of it we’ll have another set of school keepsakes to treasure.

I know I’m a sucker for creating these memories but I know that one day in the future, they will be so very precious to look back on.