At DadLabs we are committed to raising sensitive, expressive, creative, and empathetic children. One of the best ways to nurture these traits in your kid is through art. It's important to encourage your child to honor their artistic impulses. And you will treasure their artwork. Small children create precious family masterpieces that will bring their parents joy for a lifetime. The problem is that this crap piles up.Pre-school kids, daycare kids, and kindergarteners in particular are little art factories that put Andy Warhol to shame. They bring this stuff home by the ream. And what's a dad to do? If you're like most families, your gallery space is limited. Your closets are bursting with collages, handmade birthday cards, handprint bouquets and paper handpuppets of former presidents. How do you decide what goes up onto Museé Frigidaire, and what goes into le garbage?
I'm no art critic. I don't really have a strong internal set of criterion by which to judge. And how do you decide how much inventory to carry? If I decide to keep something that my daughter brings home, does that mean I have to throw out something my son made when he was in kindergarten?
Say you make a decision that the Crayola landscape with pony and alligator doesn't make the cut. Are you know obligated to sneak out to the dumpster at the grocery store in the dark of night? How do you secretly dispose of the art that doesn't make the grade? One can easily imagine a young child, say a girl of about five, finding her art in the garbage can and breaking down in tears as your parental guilt that you've just destroyed her self-esteem overwhelms you? Not that it's ever happened to me. I'm just asking.
What do you manage all the art that your kids bring home?
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Comments: 10
Seriously. She'll be thrilled.
Lynn -- I find everything they do to be interesting and worthy -- that's what makes deciding what to keep so excruciating.
Actually, I have been busted disposing of the 37th iteration of an Elephant picking a flower with her trunk, or that fourth mile of paper chain strung throughout the house. and the tears--oh my, the tears...I feel like such a cretin, even as I explain that I simply can NOT keep every single piece of paper or craft material that their hands have been on.
My daughter is 5 1/2, starting Kindergarten in the fall, and my intention, like Susan, is to go ahead and dedicate a rubbermaid bin to her Kindergarten projects. Same for my son (3 1/2) who starts three-day preschool this fall.
I choose the keepers based on originality, humour factor, or serious heart-string tugging (i.e. I love you mommy! etc.). When I feel like there's a bunch that all look the same, I start culling them out. Oh, and Effort--as my daughter has gotten older, and refined her small motor skills, a quick scribble on a page to be thrust at me two seconds later, with a hasty, "Here mommy, I made it for you..." doesn't make the keeper pile anymore.