Friendship book - a keepsake for your students (and yourself)

A few days ago I looked through the Instagram account of a shop I really like. It sells wonderful educational things and I often discover new stuff for my own kids there.
This time a book caught my attention as it reminded me of my own childhood: a friendship book.

I didn't know they still existed. Or maybe they do. Maybe they are just not "a thing" here in France where I live now and that's why I've never seen them anymore.
In any case, I got thrown back into my old memories and how fun it was to swap those books, write in them, get creative and receive my own book back. 

Even now I'd sometimes take out those books and reread them and wonder how much we had all grown. Sometimes I would remember old friends, wondering what they may be doing now. Sometimes memories of things we had done together came back...
Anyway, a precious keepsake for forever.

The same day later a colleague sent me a message about how she will jump in for another colleague and teach her English class for the entire morning. I thought this calls for project work, center activities and other fun stuff. Right away my mind wondered back to this book.
Wouldn't it be great to create such a book together and be able to keep it forever to remember your friends and classmates?

How is it done?

Normally you have an entire year to pass your own book around and give it to your friends. By the end of the year you'd have it all completed. But for this activity we don't really have this much time, plus it may also depend on how many kids you have in your group or class. We have between 24 and 28 and I doubt the parents would be happy to provide 28 pictures of their child for everyone.

So here is what we do. Every child gets a page to fill out. Notice that the pages are created in a way that you can use them with preschool kids who can simply draw their answer - or have their grownup help with filling everything out - or kids who start to write can do so and draw at the same time to keep things fun.

Then the kids give their pages to you, the teacher, who makes copies and binds everything together in a book. Once it's all done, the kids can take their copy back home.

Download the file here