Tuesday, June 22, 2010

What to Do With All This Stuff?! (I mean beautiful work of art)

Yesterday was my boys last day of school and they brought home a truck load of paper. Math tests, short stories, diagrams, plethora of art work in various sizes, half-used notebooks, and assortment of other unknown papers.

Yes, a lot of paper. So what to do with all of this work-of-art that our kids put their heart in soul into for an entire year and yet what do we do with it all? When my oldest son was in kindergarten I kept just about every caterpillar he drew or scribble mark the he took effort to put on a piece of paper – but now we are being controlled by the ever growing mount of PAPER!


So, I try to go through the stack to just asses how they did throughout the year, then take out the impressive items and the other papers I take out to the big trash bins in the back so they don’t see their work of art hanging out of the trash cans. It is still an overwhelming chore and their “work of art” is growing out of their designated “Art” labeled box.

So what do you do with all the paper work that your children bring home?

2 comments:

  1. Well, I'm still at the preschool years and keeping everything, but my mom had a great idea... she took pictures of the "special" stuff and (ultimately, after years) put them in photo albums for us... she even did this with All Star t-shirts and essays. I always laughed at her, but it is nice to have pieces of my past to look back to... especially now that I'm a mom!

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  2. That is a great idea! Some items are too bulky to keep (ie the science project) and some work one may not see its beauty later, so taking a photo is a fabulous solution. The items that I know they spend a lot of time and put sweat into, I keep and I put in their own "art" box. The other excellent work gets framed. My oldest son came home with a 3" binder full of highlighted and labeled work he did throughout the year, plus a box of art (the big magic stick is cute, but where to put it?), plus a backpack full of half-filled notebooks, and used workbooks. So much to sort through.

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