We all want to be those Pinterest-worthy parents, right? But let’s be honest – we have mountains of stuff to do, especially at the beginning of the school year.
We have just spent the summer exhausting ourselves trying to balance family and work with the kids at home, and now we start the school rush, followed by the holiday rush. It seems like there is always something going on. We know we should do something to document this time, but honestly, we don’t have the time to dedicate to something complicated. Back-to-school videos are the perfect way to document and preserve memories simply and cheaply.
[Tweet “Creating Nostalgia with Back-to-School Videos”]
How can you plan to make this a little less stressful? First, stop being pressured by all of the social media posts of perfect families! Next, think about the little memories that you would like to preserve for years to come and focus on those.
Back-to-school videos are a quick, easy way to capture many memorable moments in a short time. The bonus is that it’s an easily repeatable process for every school year. Making a first—and last-day-of-school video is an amazing way to capture your child’s changes from year to year. It also makes a really fun graduation video and gift to see all of the videos play from Kindergarten through 12th Grade.
When planning your annual videos, consider these ideas:
Location
Choose a location for video recording with a simple background or somewhere your child feels comfortable. Using their own bedroom is a way to preserve the memories of their changing room décor at the same time. Another idea would be to choose a location that is your child’s favorite hangout, hobby, or team sports spot.
Style
Consider choosing an interview-based video where you ask your child the same questions each year on the first and last day of school. A mix of information and feeling-based questions works best. On the first day of school, you can ask basic questions such as their age, school’s name, who their teacher will be, favorite foods, hobbies, friends and more. Also, include questions about how they feel about the coming year. What are they most excited or nervous about? For the last day of school video, you can focus on what changed during the year and keep things open-ended related to their favorite memories of the year. Write out a basic script and use it from year-to-year.
[Tweet “Doing a first and last day of school video is an amazing way to capture your child’s changes”]
Length
Keep the length to approximately two minutes. The whole point is for this to be quick, easy and repeatable. This is where writing out the simple script becomes helpful. This will also allow the final collection of videos to remain under 30 minutes, which is a good length for watching many years from now.
Preservation
This is the part that we always forget – storing the video. After you take the video, be sure to transfer the file to your computer, name the file something obvious (Sarah’s 1st Day of 3rd Grade Video), create a folder on your external hard drive where you will save these videos every single year. This will also make it easier to create a keepsake at the end of high school.
Back-to-school videos are a great way to document your child’s changes throughout each school year and K through 12 years, and they create awesome family time. Your child will love looking back at this collection of videos in a keepsake when they are adults. Their children will love watching and probably make fun of their parents in the videos. And you will love watching the videos yourself when you’re an empty nester.
