Starting school? A checklist for saving your nursery memories

There's a particular lump in your throat in late August, when the school shoes are bought a size too big and the nursery years are suddenly behind you. Reception starts in a few weeks. Before the new chapter takes over, it's worth taking an hour to close the old one properly.

Here's a gentle checklist for the jump from nursery to school.

Save all the photos before access goes

This is the time-sensitive one, so do it first. Once your child leaves nursery, your access to the app usually gets switched off, sometimes within days. Whatever you haven't saved by then, you lose.

• Grab every photo at full size, not the shrunk version you get from saving to your phone.
• On a laptop or desktop, NurseryDownloader pulls all the full-size originals straight to your computer in one go. It works with ParentZone, Famly, Famly.de and Bright Horizons FamilyApp, nothing is uploaded, and the free trial covers 20 downloads.
• While you're in there, save any learning journeys, reports or "all about me" pages too.

Back them up properly

Once the photos are on your computer, don't leave them sitting in one folder on one machine. Copy them somewhere safe. A cloud account and an external drive is the simple belt-and-braces approach. If one fails, you've still got the other.

Write down the stories while you remember them

The photos capture how they looked. The stories capture who they were, and those fade faster than you'd think.

Take ten minutes and jot down a few:

• The made-up words they used and never will again
• Their best friend's name and what they did together
• The thing they were obsessed with this year
• A funny moment a key worker told you about at pickup

A note on your phone is fine. You'll be so glad of it in a few years.

Mark the moment

This bit's just for the heart. A couple of small things worth doing:

• Take a first-day photo at the school gate, then dig out a last-day nursery photo and put the pair side by side. The jump in a few months is something else.
• Keep one real keepsake. A painting, the name tag from their peg, a wonky clay thing. One is plenty.

And breathe

That's it. Photos saved and backed up, stories written down, one keepsake kept, a first-day photo taken. The nursery years are safe, and you can give September your full attention.

They'll be fine. So will you, mostly.