I have recently entered the nesting phase of pregnancy, which means I have been cleaning the house, organizing, discarding, selling, and donating (more than usual). When Amelia first started daycare, I got an empty tub and every week when her backpack came home with the artwork I would toss it in the bin. Three years of school later and the bin is overflowing. A good idea in theory.
Clean it Out
I first started weeding out what I didn’t need. Jennifer has a great post about setting guidelines for yourself. I wasn’t quite as strict though because the cool thing about saving these projects is that you can see Amelia’s progress and mastery of a skill. Maybe it’s just the teacher in me, but I want to cherish that!
Display it
In the same post Jennifer also shows a creative way to display multiple pieces of artwork. I found something similar on Amazon. Each week when Amelia’s artwork comes home I select one piece to display for the week (usually the month because I forget to change it). The rest I put in the bin.
Storage
One thing I learned is that in order to track her progress there needed to be some sort of date on each paper or project. This also helps with organization. So taped to the bin I keep a sharpie and quickly scribble the month and year on each paper for future sorting or memorabilia.
Keepsake
This year Amelia moved classrooms so I found myself trying to figure out how I wanted to store all of her work from Preschool 1. I found ArtKive Box on Instagram. (My bank account tells me I really need to get off Instagram).
What this company does is send you a pre-paid box you can put up to 400 pieces of art in and they photograph them. You then can choose to put these images in a book, collage print, or online gallery. Although this is really cool, the service can get kind of pricey, so it might be better to reserve this for older children whose art is a little more refined.
With the same concept you can easily photograph or scan images on your phone and then import them into a Shutterfly Photobook or something similar.
A quick Pinterest or Esty search can offer so many other ideas and mediums.
How do you store and display your child’s artwork?
