Include a family heirloom page in your family heritage scrapbook. You can ask your students to bring in their paper or flat family heirlooms for inclusion in the scrapbook. The items should be things such as tickets, visas, birth certificates, coins, pictures, ribbons and other flat, two-dimensional items. Flat items and paper items will fit into a scrapbook more easily than three-dimensional objects. Have the students write a paragraph about the item, explaining what it is and why it is an heirloom. Students can also make copies of these heirlooms if they are worried about damage to them.
Make a pictorial family story for the scrapbook. Have the students use a few pages of their scrapbook to create a picture book telling a unique, funny or triumphant story about an occurrence within their families. They should use magazine pictures, newspaper articles and family photos (or copies of photos). The story can be recent or very old. The students should only use pictures and a few words for the story; they will tell the story themselves when they present it to the class.
Have the students complete a family history map. For this project, your students will map out their family's journey from their ancestral countries to the United States (or whatever country they are living in presently). The students will need small maps of the United States and global maps. They will create a route on the map, using pictures and markers. For example, a student may begin the route in Ireland (where his great grandfather was born), then trace it to New York (where his great-grandfather moved and started a family), and lastly end it in Georgia (where his family lives now).
Lastly, you can have your students create a scrapbook page showcasing one relative of their choice. They will choose one relative that they are particularly interested in and give information about that person. For example, a student may want to create a page in her scrapbook about her great-aunt Jane. She would include a picture of her aunt and several pictures of things relating to her aunt, such as a picture of a plane (because aunt Jane is a flight attendant) and a horse (because aunt Jane loves riding horses).