How do you keep your child's art work?

[Jessica1501]

Everyday my DD brings around 4-5 art or craft work from her preK. Each day school has different stuff, like in the last few days, she made pumpkins, bats, costumes... so if I want to keep the best one or something different each day, it's still too many.

Because she does many different craft work everyday and also we are busy doing many other activities at home, we never looks back her previous craft work. My home is too small and already full of her other stuff, also I don't know what to do with her work, so many times I have to throw them away, but I feel really guilty.

Do you have any suggestion for me? How do you keep your child's work?

[AdinaL]

Are they flat?  A big scrapbook with drop in pages works for flat stuff.  

For non-flat stuff I usually try to incorporate it into the holiday decorations, and then store it.  It is fun to take out each year.

[crunchy_mommy]

4-5 a DAY?! That is a lot!

We give away artwork as much as possible (whenever we visit grandma, for ex.!)

Large pieces (paintings etc.) make great wrapping paper.

I keep a few of his or my favorites. I intend to put them in a binder or scrapbook but really they are just sitting in a box probably getting crumpled, I haven't been too organized lately.

We leave some out to play with. He usually ruins them in the course of playing with them lol... so, they end up in the trash on their own.

Some can be cut up to make a collage/decoupage/new artwork.

Other than that -- I take pictures of each piece. Maybe the pictures will just sit on a disk indefinitely, or maybe I'll pick some to print out in a book (like the Snapfish photo books, several to a page maybe?) so they can be more organized & take up less space. Once I've taken a picture, I feel more free to discard it in whatever manner.

[newmamalizzy]

Originally Posted by crunchy_mommy 

Other than that -- I take pictures of each piece. Maybe the pictures will just sit on a disk indefinitely, or maybe I'll pick some to print out in a book (like the Snapfish photo books, several to a page maybe?) so they can be more organized & take up less space. Once I've taken a picture, I feel more free to discard it in whatever manner.

This is what I do, too.

[APToddlerMama]

My son does a lot of artwork and I take a picture of maybe one thing a week (out of like 100). Everything else gets recycled. Throwing away your kid's artwork feels kind of bad but really, nobody can keep all that.

[BlueMonday]

i did the picture taking my daughter's first year of art playgroup but haven't really bothered since her enthusiasm for public school artwork waned...

but i saw a great idea to export the images as thumbnails onto a big, poster-sized contact sheet and frame it for grandparents, etc.

now i keep the good stuff for wrapping paper and try to get them to reuse the rest as scrap drawing paper. i keep an old style architect's flat file which works really well for their drawing supplies and paper.

[Jessica1501]

After reading your posts, I feel less guilty when throwing away DD's art work.

Can you guys tell a little bit more what your child usually makes (on his own without your guidance). Besides drawing his favorite things like cars, trees... does he tell you a story about his work?

Also, which kind of drawing/coloring tools he uses? (coloring pencils, brushes, crayon...)

[gonyere]

Neat stuff gets hung up on the fridge untill something new comes to replace it. A couple of things he did last year that I absolutely *LOVED* are now hanging up in our hallway - I expect to add, very infrequently, to that collection :)

[BlueMonday]

Originally Posted by Jessica1501 

After reading your posts, I feel less guilty when throwing away DD's art work.

Can you guys tell a little bit more what your child usually makes (on his own without your guidance). Besides drawing his favorite things like cars, trees... does he tell you a story about his work?

Also, which kind of drawing/coloring tools he uses? (coloring pencils, brushes, crayon...)

i've also started keeping blank journals handy and primary composition books with the storyboard space and the beginning writer's ruled lines for captions/stories. i feel much better about saving the favorite-type artwork in books that can be easily stored, i'm constantly waging war against the paper flow in my apartment. my kindergartener's art/global studies teacher actually requested blank sketchbooks which i really appreciate.

mine both love markers, colored pencils, crayons, stickers. on a tangent, i just saved this to do:

http://elliemoon.typepad.com/blog/2012/10/hand-art-an-optical-illusion.html

[rnra]

Find a way to temporarily display some of them...

http://alittleofthis---alittleofthat.blogspot.com/search?q=kids+art+display

http://asoftplace.net/2011/07/displaying-kids-artwork-love-this/

http://lifelovelarson.blogspot.com/2012/06/kids-artwork-display-system.html

Then set a limit for how many you are interested in keeping per year.  Divide that number up by month.  I keep one or two per kid per month.  For the ones I keep, I quickly write their name and age on the back. Then when they get older (much older, like late teens) we go back through the box, and probably end up keeping about one per year for the "permanent collection."

Hope that helps!

[limabean]

For DD's preschool artwork, it's usually seasonal, so we put it up as decorations (on the fridge, mantle, or just taped to the wall) and then dispose of it after a while. Really cool stuff I keep in a large expandable file -- I have one going for each kid, but I probably only save 5-10 items per year in there, so it's not overwhelming. 

These days, DD is a very prolific artist at home, doing many pages worth of "writing," coloring, and drawing at home, so I bought a large pad of newsprint for her to use and told her that it's like her very own art book to discourage her from tearing out each page as she finished. She still tears out a piece here and there, but mostly she's gotten pretty good at leaving the pages in the book, and it's fun to be able to leaf back through it and see all the stuff she's done (and it's nice and compact!). 

[quote]Can you guys tell a little bit more what your child usually makes (on his own without your guidance). Besides drawing his favorite things like cars, trees... does he tell you a story about his work?

Also, which kind of drawing/coloring tools he uses? (coloring pencils, brushes, crayon...)[/quote]

DD's drawings often have something to do with what we did that day, with lots of fantasy elements involved. So if we went to the grocery store, she might draw a picture of us at the grocery store, but Minnie Mouse will be with us, and the watermelons will have antennae, etc. Most of her pictures are of our family doing something together. I mostly gave her crayons for a long time, but she really preferred to use a pencil, so for quite a while all her pictures were gray. Then it finally occurred to me that, duh, they make colored pencils, so I bought her a box of those and that's mostly what she uses these days. She's really into cutting and taping too, so I've been giving her my scrapbooking scraps to play with and she likes that. 

[Mylie]

Some I frame..some I put in a scrapbook, some are put on the fridgerator,some are given away to relatives that live far away..And yes a few are thrown away..The holiday pics and projects I try to make into ornaments if I can..They go on the tree,dangle from the windows/corners...Anywhere I can possible hang to display..

[marsupial-mom]

I take pictures, too.

I also pawn some of it off on grandparents.

[mamazee]

I keep only a few samples - favorites. Maybe 5 a year. The rest get recycled.

[Jessica1501]

Thanks guys.

@rnra: Very impressive ideas and art work. Thanks.

I see a person does like this:

Her DD is 10 year old and is given some money regularly to spend on her own stuff like buying snacks, school supplies... (not much, just enough for those things)

Her DD sells some of her art work to mommy's friends and co-workers (actually mommy gives money to them to pay for her, maybe $5 each)

There are 3 purposes:

1/ Encourage her to draw because she thinks other people respect her work.

2/ Make her feel confident because she does the good thing to earn money.

3/ She learns that everybody needs to work to have money, so she will learn how to save and spend appropriately.

My DD is just 5 so should I do like that to make her feel more confident, and I take that money to buy what she wants?

[crunchy_mommy]

Originally Posted by Jessica1501 

After reading your posts, I feel less guilty when throwing away DD's art work.
Can you guys tell a little bit more what your child usually makes (on his own without your guidance). Besides drawing his favorite things like cars, trees... does he tell you a story about his work?
Also, which kind of drawing/coloring tools he uses? (coloring pencils, brushes, crayon...)

DS (3yo) mostly draws people, animals, snowmen, for a friend's birthday he drew a birthday cake going into the oven, and then one out of the oven, and then a third one with candles in it. I guess that's the closest to a "story" he's come up with. And one time he drew boats and then drew us on the boat, I think there was more story behind it than I'm remembering. But most often he just makes random designs and figures. He's more into writing than drawing lately.

He uses pencils, pens, brushes, chalk... markers seem to be one of his favorites. He's not into crayons, and he prefers to draw all in one color (grey or black).

ETA: About the selling artwork... I don't know that I'd be comfortable doing that with a 5yo... I guess because I'd want to make sure they fully grasp the concept of making artwork for their own sake, and selling it moves the focus to how their work makes others feel & may limit the variety, willingness to try new methods or mediums, etc. because they just want to make things they think others will want to buy.

[tbone_kneegrabber]

I try to take pictures of the stuff ds makes that he or I really like.  I downloaded an app called ArtKive the other day.  I just started using it so I can't really speak to how well it works etc.  I liked the idea that I could take pictures of stuff and share it with family and maybe make a book of his art eventually.

[rnra]

I wouldn't encourage selling artwork at this young age.  Things like art are ones that I hope my children enjoy for their own personal satisfaction--regardless of if other people are drawn to it or not.