Leslie K. and I worked with a friend this afternoon to de-clutter her kitchen table and find a method for whittling down and saving preschool art. With two guys under age five there is a lot of preschool art coming home every week. What to save???
As an experienced Creative Memories consultant Leslie suggested:
- Save the best stuff--what pulls at your heart when you try to toss it?
- Give priority to what the kids actually made on their own--the fingerpainted duck beats out an Easter egg decorated with store-bought stickers.
- If it's 3-D it's going to be hard to keep over the years. Take a photo and toss the real thing.
- Forget trying to save anything decorated with marshmallows, Fruit Loops or macaroni.
- Write your child's name, the teacher's name, the "school" and the approximate date on the back of each item you keep.
- Go ahead and keep something you're unsure of, but review your stash in a year and whittle it down again.
On Friday I had told Fiona that we were going to be helping a friend sort through preschool art. Fiona described how she had attended a workshop at the JCC and learned how to make an inexpensive portfolio from two pieces of large poster board. This worked great today, we just taped the pieces together at the bottom and it was ready to use. The poster board portfolio should hold several months of saved art work. Cost? $1.04 plus tax at Wal-Mart. We used colorful folders for 8.5 x 11" papers, one for each guy, and stuck them in the portfolio.
Stay tuned for how we made the refrigerator shine again.
We found the table! Note the hanging art that now decorates the kitchen table area. Each guy gets one picture to display for a limited engagement!
We found the table! Note the hanging art that now decorates the kitchen table area. Each guy gets one picture to display for a limited engagement!
