Our biggest lad started Kindergarten this year. He was excited about it and so was I! To mark the beginning of his formal education, we, like all parents, took some happy snaps of his first day. I’d previously been hunting around Pinterest for inspiration for first day of school photos and found ‘first day’ and ‘last day’ school photos and was keen to do my own. So I whipped out a small chalk board that we’ve had floating around for a while, wrote the words ‘First day of Kindergarten 2016’ on it and told the biggest lad to hold it while I took some pictures. I think it’s a sweet way to mark the first day of school. Now the challenge will be to remember to find the chalk board and do it again on his last day of Kindergarten. I’m interested to see how he has changed and grown during the school year.
If you don’t have a chalk board handy, you could easily achieve the same thing by writing ‘first day of’ on a piece of blank paper. Or you could use one of the many free printables that are available on the web. I like these free chalkboard printables and they are available for both the first and last day of school. This post has adorable first and last day of school photos. The little girl holds a blank piece of paper and then her mum photoshops the words in later. Clever, hey? Now, if you are thinking ‘I wish I’d done that’, it’s really not too late! The school year has just began and honestly, no one will know the difference between a first day at school and a nine days at school photo.
Add some text
An alternative to the ‘chalk board’ photos is to photo shop some text onto a photo of your kids first day. I do little interviews with the boys on their birthdays (here’s the third birthday and fifth birthday interviews). I simply asked the biggest lad what he wants to be when he grows up. I figured that’s relevant to school! I also added in his teachers name, because I am hopeless at remembering those kind of details. I used Picmonkey to add in this text, it’s free and easy to use. A blank wall or all brick wall would no doubt work better, but you can’t be too fussy! The biggest lad was in the centre of this photo so I cropped it so that he was off to the left, leaving room for the text.
Candid shots
Don’t forget to take some action shots on the first day of school! We have some of the biggest lad trotting off with his comparatively huge backpack, him in the class room and with one of his buddies. I’m a sucker for totally adorable Kindy classrooms and so also snapped some pictures of his class.
There you have it, the biggest lad’s first day of school photos! Do you have any first day of school traditions?
Love these ideas! And the biggest lad does look very excited! I can see the middle lad hard at work too 😃
We also ask a number of questions, we started last year when our own biggest lad started preschool. It was interesting to see how his answers have changed (new favourite TV shows, colours), or not as the case may be (still loves Spider-Man!). Apparently this year his favourite food is broccoli?! I’m yet to see any evidence of this!
Oh yes, the middle lad wanted in on the action because scissors! I’d be serving up broccoli each night xx
Love the little blackboard. What a cutie he is!!
Thanks Rachel, he can be sweet!
I love back to school shots! I love the text overlay too, and I try to get similar shots on the first and last day so I can put them together.
The text overlay thing is so simple, one of the best things blogging has taught me!
These are so cute Clair 🙂 I had this great idea to use the Lightbox but as we were rushing out the door I quickly took a photo and didn’t have time to change it from ‘happy Australia day’ haha
I do love the comparative first and last day photos it’s really amazing to see how much they grow in a year
I love the idea of the lightbox. Snap one soon, everyone else will be blissfully unaware it wasn’t his actual first day!
Awww, I love these ideas. So good to look back on too. I hope he enjoyed himself 🙂
No complaints or tears so far Kelly!
Glad you got some photos! Our eldest holds up a piece of paper on his first day of school that says first day of year x, the date and what he wants to be when he grows up. We have a special school memory book we put them in – so far, some of the things he’s wanted to be when he grows up is a stay at home dad and Lego designer (many years in a row now!)
Lego designer, he might be on to something!
Oh he’s so cute! And such cool ideas! I’ll have to remember to go back to the ones I took of Finn and put some text on them.
Thanks Haidee! I’m sure adding some text to a photo of Finn would be easy.