Ask a parent what goes in a kids' keepsake book and almost everyone says the same thing: drawings. That's true, but it's a narrower answer than it needs to be.
A crayon sun and a stick-figure family are the obvious candidates. The pieces that actually make a book feel complete years later are usually the ones nobody thought to include at the time — the practical, the boring, the half-finished. Here's what tends to get left out, and why it's worth putting back in.
1.Report cards
A DepEd report card — Form 138, now SF9 — looks like paperwork, not a keepsake. But a full run of report cards, side by side, is one of the few objects that shows a child's actual handwriting-level progress, subject by subject, year by year — something no single photo can do. Most parents keep them in a drawer and never look at them again. Bound into a book, they become genuinely readable.
2.Certificates and awards
Perfect attendance, a spelling bee ribbon, a "most improved" certificate from a summer class — these get handed over proudly, displayed on the fridge for a week, and then lost in the shuffle. They're small, they're flat, and they photograph well. If your child ever brought something like this home, it belongs in the same book as the drawings, not in a separate pile you'll never sort.
3.Letters and notes
A note left on the kitchen counter. A Mother's Day card with the spelling still working itself out. A letter to Santa. These are usually the first things a parent says they wish they'd kept, and usually the first things that get thrown out, because in the moment they don't look like something worth saving. They read differently ten years later.
4.The unfinished pieces
Not every drawing gets completed. A half-colored page, a sketch abandoned halfway through, a project your child insisted wasn't "done yet" and never returned to — these usually get quietly thrown out during a cleanup, on the logic that an unfinished thing isn't worth keeping. In practice, the unfinished ones are often the most honest record of how a child actually worked at a given age.
5.Early handwriting
The first attempt at writing their own name. A worksheet from the exact week the letters started looking like letters instead of scribbles. This is easy to overlook because it doesn't look like "art" — it's lined paper, pencil, mistakes crossed out. It's also one of the clearest before-and-after markers of a specific age, which is exactly what makes a keepsake book worth having.
6.School photos and IDs
The annual school picture day photo, a laminated student ID from a grade your child has long since left behind — small, easy to misplace, and rarely printed anywhere except the one copy that came home. Paired with the artwork from the same year, they anchor the book to an actual age and grade, instead of leaving everything to guesswork later.
None of this needs a separate process. If it's flat, paper, and something your child made or received, it scans and lays out the same way a drawing does — the trick is just remembering to set it aside instead of filing it in a drawer you won't open again.
Not sure what counts?
Send us a photo of what you've got — drawings, report cards, or otherwise — and we'll tell you what fits. Free pickup anywhere in Metro Manila.
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