Beyond the Fridge: Managing Your Child's Art Projects Before They Take Over the House

May 14, 2008

by Amy Rees

We love preschools that allow our children to do interesting, inspired art projects.  We love seeing the work of our little artists.  We also wonder what on earth to do with all the stuff that comes dashing in the door every single school day.  We admit it, we are drowning.

Looking for some great ideas for how to appreciate the work, display it, delight in it, store it, and (as necessary) dispose of it?  Look no further.

• Make an art wall, but this time in your child's room in addition to the one on the fridge.  Your child's art in your child's room is the preschool equivalent of a one-man show.  Pop the bubbly; we've got a gallery opening here! 

• Manage the work, whether on the fridge or the art wall or wherever.  One painting goes up, another cherished work goes away.  One in, one out.  Just like financial accounting rules or best practices when it comes to buying shoes.  Ruthless management is sometimes the only way to go.

• Get an empty box or oversized portfolio and label it with your child's name and the school year or age.  The keepers go in there.  If there is too much to fit, some decisions need to be made.  When you are done, you'll have a nice tidy set of boxes for your child(ren), already organized by year from preschool on up. 

• Assemble an art collage out of cuttings from numerous paintings and drawings and paper works.  Glue together and frame, and presto, you've got her first retrospective.

• Take pictures of the works as they come in, and then you'll always have a digital record of the wonders, even when reasons of space and practicality dictated tossing a big stack.  And from those pictures, make a gorgeous book from Blurb or one of the photo sites and cherish it on a shelf forever.

• Looking for a good way to identify a keeper?  One that shows the child's size (with a handprint, perhaps) or a new skill (his first titled work, her first signed work, the first tadpole figure, the first family).

• Use flat works as wrapping paper for gifts. 

• Get a clear plastic table cloth for your kitchen table and put drawings and paintings underneath.  Rotate as necessary.

• Take a painting or drawing to a local copy shop and laminate it as a placemat for the dinner table (or as a gift for grandparents or aunties)

Then toss the rest, without guilt.  You delight in the works as they are made.  You diligently a subset of whatever size and amount makes you happy in your home.  And then the rest goes away.  It's okay -- it is good practice for the years and years worth of school work and spelling tests and cursive exercises and book reports that are headed your way.

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