Sarah is a freelance writer and one of Australia's best known parenting bloggers.In her everyday ...
Parenting
Parenting Blog
Sarah
13
Feb
Storing your kids craft. Are you a softie or ruthless?
One of my girlfriend’s cannot bear to part with any of the craft or artwork she and her toddler have created together. At all. Instead there are crates in her shed crammed to overflowing with the crafty things that her daughter has made. When I asked her what she planned to do with them down the line she shrugged helplessly. Then she asked me for advice. She knows I am ruthless when it comes to my kids artwork. In fact, we are the polar opposites in this respect.
So I did a little research. I am sympathetic to the fact that these are precious memories she wants to keep and even though they fill her shed now, I suspect they will be lovely to look back at when her little one is older. An article in the NY times made me feel a bit better about our differing attitudes on the subject.
I have a scrapbook for each of the offspring and I tend to save two or three pieces of their artwork each month for it. My eldest child’s school saves me the trouble of saving any of his efforts by creating a fantastic portfolio of work that takes pride of place on the shelf at the end of each year.
The words of David Burton, a professor of art education at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond were very encouraging about how children, especially small ones feel about their artwork “Once they’re through with it, they may lose interest in it very quickly. The process is more important than the product for the child.”
His advice is brilliant for parents. Have 2 file boxes: “The first one is a temporary file for recent creations. The second is a kind of permanent vault, which holds a few selected works, spanning the course of 5 to 10 years. Each piece can include a makeshift museum card. Write the title of the piece, the age of the artist and the date. While parents are at it, they may want to add the story behind the picture in a sentence or two.”
The alternative is to take digital pictures of the artwork and then “recycle” bin the original.
So I told all this to my friend. And that I’d blog about it as well. She sighed. And then went off to buy some memory cards for her digital camera.
Do you keep your kids craft? How do you store it?
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5 Member comments Post a reply
Sarah shows her ruthless streak when it comes to all things craft. And gets help for her friend.
Read the full blog post: Storing your kids craft. Are you a softie or ruthless?
Posted 13 February 2011 - 11:52 PM
I too am RUTHLESS! Mainly because after almost 20 years being with my husband his Mum (who I adore) still manages to filter items such as school work of his to us. I cannot imagine carting sucg things around in every house move you make.
So, what do I do besides keeping the really special, great, wonderful, stand out pieces? Well I photograph or scan them.
It is so much easier to store a digital image of the original on the computer, that way you can keep them all with no storage space required.
You will thank me when you have to pay a removalist some day in the future.
Posted 14 February 2011 - 12:08 AM
I am a bit of both. I recently went through all my daughters pictures while she was at school and kept the good ones but she noticed unfortunately. When it comes to actually keeping memories of my two kids, I actually make family home movies and keep my photos well organized. So many mums I have spoken to don't know how to make their video clips into movies, so I recently started my own business doing this and several other things. Please have a look at my website, as it's a perfect way to keep those memories and show family and friends! it's www.julietsmovieandphotoediting.com.au I do movies, photo slideshows, photo editing, personalized invitations and greeting cards and photo collages and have alot of my examples on my website. I have two little kids 5 and 3, and my family loves to see what they have been up to, since they don't live in the same town as us! Any questions are welcome...Juliet.
Posted 24 February 2011 - 12:17 AM
RUTHLESS!
Stuff for the Christmas tree gets stored in the XMAS decorations box so that stays, I have 2 file-o-frames and when they fill up we go thru together and throw out anything both DS1 and I agree on to make space for new CRAP (it is).
If it has no place to be stored it goes in the bin. I personally have never looked for anything I made in preschool etc. I chose to keep a prize winning picture I drew in yr 6, an assignment I loved from yr 10 and 1 uni assignment.
I take photos of stuff sometimes because I do a teeny bit of scrapbooking and I will keep DS2's doggy (DS1 isn't attached to anything).
As we've seen in Qld, Vic, WA and Christchurch this month it can all go in a second. I don't see the point in keeping it cluttering up my house!! I have a friend who is the extreme opposite. She has EVERYTHING her kids have ever brought home in about 20 odd tubs in their already overstuffed house... ewwwww.
Posted 24 February 2011 - 08:31 AM
To keep a record of all of the little arts & crafts projects I take a photo of my child with them and then out them in a special album for her. Now we can look at them any time and having her in most of the pictures gives us a great record of how old she was at different developmental stages.
Posted 02 March 2011 - 10:32 PM
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