Preserving Your Childrens Art

As a part of WFMW I will explain my preservation system. Uh, that would be preservation of papers not my sanity. Although come to think of it my sanity really is involved because I cannot stand papers and things lying all over and in a mess. To combat this dilemma I bought the two scrapbooks on the left for Tink and Peter. In them I am going to put all the cards they have received from their grandparents and which now reside in a shoebox. Along with that I'm putting all the homemade little cards and notes they've given me over the past years. Then when they're all grown up they can take this notebook with them and have a copy of all their little sayings and cards.

I noticed last year that tons of papers were going into our recycle and most of them consisted of the kids school papers. So this year I purchased these three ring binders and I'm putting the kids finished worksheets into them. I cannot tell you how motivating it is for them to finish their page so they can punch the holes in it and put it in their notebook. They love it. Then every evening they bring their notebooks to Dad and show him all their stuff. It's so cute.This system also helps me remember exactly what we've studied and it's an easy way to see the improvements made over the year in handwriting, working sums, etc.


This large notebook contains all of Peters artwork in preschool. The teacher charged a photo fee at the beginning of the year and then took photos of the kids with their art projects. She also tried to keep projects on a 12x12 page so the parents could scrapbook the art work. This system I cant recommend enough! When the art and pictures came home I just slipped them into a sleeve and then later when I had time I glued everything in place. Peter loves looking at his notebook. I just wish I would have done this with Tinks stuff. She had the same teacher but I didn't save all the art. I do have the pictures and I plan on scrapbooking them but it's not quite as exciting as having the artwork with it.

I've blogged for three years now. I started September of 2003. I have the first 2 years of my blog printed out on paper. I'm putting each page into a plastic sleeve and putting the blog into a three ring binders to save as a diary. I get the sleeves in bulk so they only cost about 4 cents each instead of the 50 cents piece at places like Walmart. Now I need to print out this past years entries.

I'm also putting all the stories that I print out from ambleside into notebooks. Many of the classics have been typed out by hand by homeschooling moms. So when the curriculum calls for a certain book there's a good chance you'll find it online. I print out the chapters I need and have a three ring binder for each book. I slip the papers in the sleeves and when we're done we'll have printed books of some very hard-to-find children's literature!

Having everything in albums helps keep things organized and neat. It's a good thing.