Managing Children’s Artwork
The end of the school year is upon us. You are about to get one, two maybe three piles of schoolwork that was completed during your child(ren)’s school year. The smaller the child, the larger the pile of artwork that is about to get dumped onto your kitchen counter or dining room table. Here are some ideas to manage their masterpieces all at once.
Review and edit your child’s artwork, store favorites in a labeled art box.
Take a few minutes with your child to go through the stack. Appreciate each piece and have your child tell you about the project. Pick a few select pieces that you love and your child is proud of. Maybe hang one or two in their room. Store the keepers in a labeled box. The rest can be recycled. Chances are high that your child will not want to keep all of his/hers/their work.
Revisit artwork and downsize each year.
Don’t feel guilty. But if you do, start by disposing of duplicates. Many kids will make multiple versions of the same thing so pick the best, place it in a labeled box and get rid of the rest. Return to it the following year when the new pile arrives. Chances are high that you will be ready to ‘downsize’ last year’s pile. When my son attended a Waldorf preschool, he came home with what seemed like hundreds of versions of the same watercolor paintings in varying combinations of yellow, blue and red. I kept most of them that first year. Now, at the end of each school year, I return to the preschool art box - and all the ones that followed it. My son and I sit down and look at each year’s art and we pick our favorites and part with the rest. I started with two boxes of preschool art. I now have one box that holds his preschool, kindergarten and first grade art. We kept our favorites. One box, three years and a lot less clutter.
Take photos of large artwork pieces and create a digital album.
One album of artwork photos, at the end of the elementary school years takes up a lot less room than 6 years of boxes filled with school art. My son had made a 3D model of Mt. Rushmore for the National Parks unit in 3rd grade. Mt. Rushmore was 18 inches deep, 24 inches long and about a foot high. He had done a fabulous job on it and was proud of it and wanted to keep it. Yet, he didn’t want it in his room and there was no other good place to display it. For 4 years, we kept it on a shelf in our garage and collected dust. One day he announced he didn’t want it anymore. We photographed it and threw the model out. We have an image on file, the memory of the project, and now we have newfound space.
Quick Tips
Go through artwork as soon as it comes in
Buy art boxes that can stored easily on a shelf in the closet, garage or under a bed
Label boxes
Go through prior year art boxes to whittle down stack
Take photos of large art pieces so you have the memory but not the clutter
Margaret & Jenn