Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Keepsake Book for Your Kiddos

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When Pinterest first came out years and years ago, I hopped right on board and obsessed over all of the clever things that I found on there.  The very first “Pinterest project” that I did was to implement these Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Keepsake books for each of our kiddos, and I’m still going strong on the project, so I thought I’d share it with you since it makes such a fun keepsake.

The book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is a fabulous book by the one and only Dr. Seuss, and it offers some incredible life advice for kids and adults alike.  It makes for the perfect backdrop for this project because of its wisdom and encouragement.

This project is super simple – so simple that it almost seemed silly to dedicate an entire blog post to it – but I figured I’d write about it anyway because we love this idea so much.

For this project, all you need to do is buy one copy of Oh the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss for each of your kiddos, and then at the end of each school year, have their teachers sign it.  Then you can gift it to them at their high school graduation, and they can go back and read all of the sweet comments from everyone who cared for them throughout the years.

I purchased our books as each of our kiddos was born, and therefore, I was able to get not only their elementary school teachers to sign them, but their daycare givers to sign them as well.  Every single person who has cared for our babies from birth to their current ages has signed their books, and I cannot even tell you how much these books mean to me.

I don’t let the kids read them yet – they don’t even know that these exist – and I’m hoping to keep it a surprise until their high school graduations. 

So how do I have the teachers sign them without the kiddos knowing?  Well, it was easy peasy when they were small.  In daycare, I just carried the books to school at the end of the year and I handed them to the teachers directly, I explained what they were all about, and then I left them with the teachers to sign at their leisure.  Then we just picked them up when we picked the kids up from school.

In elementary school, I email the teachers, tell them that I am going to be sending the book in, and I put it in a sealed manila envelope with the teacher’s name on it.  The kids know to give the package to their teachers, but they don’t know what’s inside, so it works nicely.  The teachers then sign the book at their leisure, and then they send it back in the manila envelope in our child’s backpack. 

Now that Jacob’s in middle school it’s going to be a bit more challenging because he has multiple teachers, but I’m sure I’ll probably do something similar – email the teachers, send the book in an envelope, and then have Jacob bring it home in the envelope. 

We always leave the books with the teachers for as long as they need so they don’t feel rushed, and their messages never disappoint.  Every single one of them has taken the time to write a detailed, thoughtful message, and I have cherished reading every single one. 

When we get the books back, I always doublecheck to make sure that all of the teachers did, in fact, sign them, and then I make sure to label the grade and school year by their note if the teachers didn’t already do that themselves.  That way everything is clearly labeled so there’s no message that gets lost in the shuffle. 

And that’s it!  I plan to give each of the kids their books on high school graduation day, and between the wisdom and encouragement written in the book along with their personalized messages from everyone who cared for them throughout the years, I hope it’s a keepsake that they cherish forever.