Monday, February 26, 2007

Kids Artwork - handy hints

ok - so some of you might not quite be up to dealing with this yet, but I figured I would write about it while it was still in my brain...

Kids artwork - are you drowning in it? Here are some practical tips I've learnt/made up as we have gone along:

1. Fridge - nice & tradional - depending on strength of your magnets - buy lots of heavy duty ones - give them to rellies & friends who need their fridges livened up
2. blu tack to walls - depends on your taste in decor, but works well
3. frame a couple of particualrly nice ones for their room/ your room/ wherever
4. stick one example (we used to get a choice of 3 or 4 of each variety home from daycare) of other nice ones in A4 display folders - usually some folding required, get child to help pick their own faves (may have a different reason to you - if particularly cute reason or answer to "and what's this one" you can write it on the back...
5. Use larger examples as gift wrap - goes down particularly well with grandparents & other rellies
6. chop up & use as outer cards for birthday cards/party invites etc
7. take digital photos of child & artwork or just artwork before recycling/chucking in bin - works particularly well for the painted egg carton variety of artwork which is hard to fold... Also shows you care about it, but don't have space to keep it all. If you're particularly techy you could even make an album or website where the child can look at their own artwork...

Will gratefully accept any other ideas - the sheer volume has reduced somewhat now that we are into doing "activity sheets" at school - but there is still a vast amount tracking it's way into our house...

6 comments:

worldpeace and a speedboat said...

my mum still has a calendar of finger painting done by Mighty Older Brother when he was about 4 yrs old, circa 1965, made by his pre-school for Xmas pressies. it is delicious. it hung on the back of the linen cupboard door from the year they moved to Maison M in 1967, until the house was sold in 2003.

the main reason she kept it, is that it was always hard to get artworks out of MOBrother. it took the kindy a full year to get that many!

it's a nice concept for using up artwork and making pressies. you just cut up a small calendar and paste each month on a different artwork, then bind together w string or a row of clips, or... I dunno. they used string, I think. it's very sweet. A2 sized approx (perhaps double foolscap in those days...).

Wenchilada said...

There's always scrapbooking! (She says, quite cheerfully and with all eagerness at the Slightly Over-enthusistic Grandmother's passion for said activity).

Heh Speedie, MOBro...

DV said...

I now have 3 artworks from my extremely talented child. His influences are clearly Jackson Pollock crossed with early aboriginal works.

At the moment, they live on the fridge but I suspect we'll fold them up at some point and save them as his first ones. I'm guessing the rest will be digitised and then used to wrap things.

Mousicles said...

I like the wrapping ideas. Spyder uses this method a bit. The Christmas wrapping and card for Jasper were made by Aemon.

My mum saved just about everything we had as kids. Even old primary school math workbooks. That's just a little to sentimental.

worldpeace and a speedboat said...

ahem.

I still have some of my infants and primary schoolbooks.

and you're not surprised!

spyder said...

All for the wrapping paper and cards- and if you have interstate rellies pack and post wads at a time. They may not want it either but it makes them feel connected and loved. And now it's in their house, not yours!

PS Gordo's parents have every photo/picture/puke stain on the 'special Aemon wall'. Shrine to gandchild is nice but just a little bit scary.