One of the most important things you can do to help your child’s growth is to encourage their creativity. Creativity helps your children problem-solve, innovate and explore new areas. It leads to higher self-esteem and motivation – it’s a very important part of a child’s early development. One way to help encourage that creativity is through positive feedback, including praising and displaying their artwork – and, besides, that’s something you’ll want to save for posterity!
However, if you have a particularly productive child, you might find the ol’ “stick ‘em on the fridge” method of saving art quickly runs into problems. Quantity begins to pile up, and while you don’t want to discourage your kids from expressing themselves, there’s also only so much space you have. Here are a few clever ideas to save your preschooler’s artwork in an organized, manageable way.
Binders
A three-ring binder is a great way to store old artwork – or new artwork you just don’t want on the fridge. You can either use a three-hole punch to fill it, or, better yet, use protective plastic sheets to store the artwork. The best thing about this method is that, at the end of the year, you can flip through the entire book and see the progress your kid has made. It also makes for a very convenient way to save the entire collection for years later – it can be a fun nostalgia trip to pull it out a decade later, to remind yourself of the preschooler your kid once was. Make a ritual out of putting the art in a new binder sleeve each day or week, and you’ll be encouraging your child without cluttering the fridge.
Go Digital
It’s the 21st century – we have computers for this sort of thing now! Whether you take a picture and save it that way or copy the art with a scanner, digital copies of artwork have several advantages over physical copies. First of all, it makes it much easier to preserve the art, especially if you have to move. It makes it easier to look through, rather than digging through boxes of old artwork. It also allows for unique gifts – there are services, such as Zazzle, which allow you to put that art on t-shirts, coffee mugs, magnets, buttons – it’s a fun, personalized stocking stuffer or gift for grandparents!
