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A La Carte (12/14)
- 12/14/10
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I need help with a strategy here. My children are constantly creating great works of art and giving them to me as gifts. Were I to add them up, their number would be greater than the stars in the sky, I’m sure. What’s a good strategy for dealing with this art? I can’t possibly keep all of it. So which works do I throw away? How badly will this emotionally scar my children? And how much will I regret throwing even those ones away if one of my kids ends up being a great artist some day?
The Four Holy Gospels - Crossway has a preview of The Four Holy Gospels, a unique take on the gospels that will be released next year. I’m not sure that I really get it, but I like it.
Reeder - If you have an iPad, you probably (hopefully) use Reeder to handle your Google Reader account. There’s now a beta of the OS X version of this app. And it’s really good, providing a much better reading experience for Google Reader. It’s Mac-only, of course.
Polemics with James White - Midwest Center for Theological Studies is offering a Polemics course with Dr. James White who will be speaking on New Atheism, Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Mormonism. There is special pricing for those who take the course via the Internet—just $10 for the whole thing.
7 Lessons from Wikileaks - I’m one who believes in the medium as the message (at least to an extent). So think Wikileaks is a big deal in a way that goes beyond just the content of the data that was released. This blogger agrees and pens a good article on some lessons we can learn.
Continuous Imperfect - In this short article Mounce goes from Greek stuff I don’t understand to a valuable lesson that I do understand—no matter your field, you need to regularly return to the basics.
Loving Aslan More Than Jesus - “If after watching The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which released in US theaters this weekend), you find yourself or your kids feeling drawn to Aslan with alarming emotion, don’t assume it’s just the result of some cinematic spell.”
Best Books of 2010 - The New York Times has a list of their top choices in fiction and non-fiction. I read a lot of books this year, and wouldn’t you know it, I haven’t read a single one of their choices (though 3 of the non-fiction choices are ones I’ve got on my wishlist).
More Best Books - Barnes & Noble has also published a list of the year’s best books and I’ve read 5 or 6 of those ones. I quite agree that all the ones they’ve listed are deserving of the recognition.
The Twelve Doctrines of Christmas - Clever!
You will not get leave to steal quietly to heaven in Christ’s company without a conflict and a cross. —Samuel Rutherford.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
Releasing on April 1, The Next
Published in 2008, this book
This is a guide that calls men,
This review of the bestselling
New to the site? You can get
This is a guide written
Comments (37)
Take pictures of *all* the great art, and keep the *pictures* forever in an album (on line is great). Every month, ask the kids to go through all the actual art and pick out the ONE piece they want you to keep. If they aren’t too big or three dimensional, you can probably store those in a decent accordian file by month.
Tim - Keep artwork for a little while, then take photos of it & keep the photos. If there’s one you’re particularly attached to, keep the original. Less space, no scars.
Not only is Reeder Mac-only, it appears as though it’s 10.6+ only too… I really need to upgrade to Snow Leopard… Oh wait, I can’t. I still have a PowerPC processor. Oh the agony.
Scanner. Scan all the artwork. Arrange them digitally and create a beautiful book using iPhoto, Blurb, or another self-publishing site of your choice, and there you have it! A published work of “Volume I” of all your children’s artwork… voila!
And they will think that’s even cooler than if you hung them on the refrigerator. Although, today’s kids, maybe you should design an online gallery of the artwork.
And who said reformed folk were no fun? That video was great. Except for the amillenialism and supralap-whatever that was they were all pretty sweet. Good thing those are the ones not worth dying for.
I like the looks of “The Four Holy Gospels.” It harkens back to the day when great art accompanied the copies of the bible.
Try a high-speed document scanner—my husband has a paperless office and scans most of the kids’ artwork. If we were using my old flatbed scanner we’d never scan everything because it takes so long, but the document scanner works great! We save a few really special pieces of art rolled up and tucked into cardboard mailing tubes—a new tube each year for each child.
My kids are 17, 15 and 14, so needless to say, the artwork has come to a halt. Save the REALLY precious ones and photograph the rest, maybe since you are on the computer a lot, you could make some of them a slideshow for your screen saver.
I did save a few of the actual items and one of them is a signed note from my now 17 y.o. boy that promises, “I will not be a crazy teenager” and he has kept his word. I will have that until I die………
Tim, dealing with children’s art requires good discernment.
I suggest finding a good book on the subject.
… just kidding.
Some really great suggestions for the artwork! I liked Diane’s suggestion combined with the saving them to the computer. Tim, my girls are all in High School now and still do artwork - just not for me. I saved all of the pieces they gave to me when younger in a folder and I still have it. Needless to say, those days fly by and dont last forever. Over the years the artwork they would produce at school was kept in their own bin and then we would have them clean it out each year and keep only what would fit in the bin. Then it becomes their decision and they do not get harmed by it. Happy cleaning and scanning.
No need to feel guilty Tim. Send them all to your mother. To her, every one will be the Mona Lisa.
Dad
Regarding the Polemics online class, I did not see a link that referred to the internet only course. Could someone send me a direct link to that information? Thanks!
We have a spot to display a limited amount of the kids’ latest artwork. We save a few pieces after they get rotated out. Others get photographed for posterity, and some go to a better home. :)
Have you considered wall-papering with the art? Just kidding! You may want to find a way to keep most of it, at least until they are old enough for you to give it back to them. If anything happens to your kids you will want to have all those little treasures. Sorry to be a downer, but I know this from personal experience.
Aaahhh… I understand the profusion of the pen and how quickly a crayola collection can become a mountain of masterpieces. Here is our three-fold strategy…1. Once it has been photographed (and flickr is my friend for keeping about a million photographs) it is fair game for the recycling which is collected each Friday… so Thursday night I march through the house gathering any artwork that is flapping around…2. I do keep extra special artworks everyone has a special box for extra special things, and I do live with a potential Roald Dahl… but do not keep all his illustrated books, just the very best. And once a week we do an artwork of the week in our journals, which we save from year to year.3. My children befriend many grannies and it is a lot easier for them to part with artworks if they gift them… I am happy the artwork is out, they are happy for gifting and the potential granny is thrilled to be gifted. Works for us!!!
Art work - every once in a while, collect some of the “artwork” and other papers and make a care package for out of town relatives … let the kids write a note/letter and send Grandma and Grandpa some of the treasures!
We used to do this about once every 6 weeks when our boys were younger … and didn’t limit it to artwork … they wanted to send their school papers (even the Math paper with the Gold Star) and other things. Not really sure what Grandma and Grandpa did with them … ;-)
I agree with photographing and/or scanning the artwork to put together into book form. My wife did this for our niece and budding artist a couple of years ago as a Christmas present. It was a beautifully hardbound book that she will cherish forever. Hey, this would probably be right up your alley, Tim!
We scan artwork and make digital scrapbooks. Some of the best pieces we keep and other fun pieces get repurposed as wraping paper for gifts that we give - especially for the grandparents.
As many have already said one a month to follow progression or growth, then save to a special place. A memory box decorated by them or by you with them in mind. Hand colored pictures will be replaced by report cards, newpaper clippings, ribbons, etc, etc,… You can also incorporate ‘date rocks’ where you engrave a special date/place/name on a special rock or a polished purchase rock to remember, a baptism, a unique event, a milestone(happy or sad) because we sometimes forget the exact dates and a rock with the date engraved serves as a release for a flood of memories on that day. Joshua Chpt 4 - What do these stones mean?. The paper memories are markers too, but the rocks(stones) are significant memories, intended to point to God and His mercy and sovereignty. I myself like to keep it all until it overflows and common sense tells me it is time to clear it out. I’m a grandma now and there are less paper ones, more unique ones made especially for me, but the stones too have more meaning. 5 of my grandsons have gone fwd, made professions of faith and been baptised. Those dates are precious and my weak memory cells are strengthened by the site of the dates and names on the rocks.Merry Christmas to all.
A simpler solution than scanning everything — keep everything on display (on the fridge or kitchen wall or whatever) for a few days. If something is particularly good (given that child’s age and ability) keep it longer if you like. Then after a week or so put each piece in a box in storage (except the stuff you’d like to keep visible a bit longer — file that when you’re good and ready.) In just a few short years, the kids will have reached the age where there is no emotional attachment to every bit of scribbling they did before. At that point, pull out a few things *you* (and your wife) feel attached to to save for posterity, then let the kids go through the box and pick out anything they want to keep. Then toss the rest.
If you are consistent about making it a policy that most stuff gets filed after a week, it will not be “scarring,” it will be “the way we do things around here.”
They will not be emotionally scarred, and the advantage of doing this over the scanning/photographing method is that I’m pretty sure that what the kids would be attached to is their original work, not an electronic image of it.
The suggestion about sending it to relatives instead of boxing it is also a good one.
My solution is admittedly a bit more brutal than the people advising you to save every shred and scrapbook it, but then I have five kids. We’d need a bigger house if I saved everything forever. Besides, while appreciating their efforts and respecting their desire to keep stuff, I’ve never been that sentimental about kids’ artwork — I save some stuff that I especially like or that has special memories to it, but I’m not the type to go weak-kneed over something just because one of my kids did it. YMMV.
My kids so the same thing with art. I usually keep them for awhile and then inconspicuously they disappear:)
Scanning them will preserve them from fading and decaying in the future. And, you can use it as screen savers and or make it into a power point presentation. That might help with your children today so that they don’t get their feelings hurt, and it might be interesting to watch the progression in their art as they get older and you add to it.
While viewing “A-La-Cart” this morning I clicked on the “Subscribe to RSS” on the left side of the page and got the following error message:Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 18350080) (tried to allocate 77824 bytes) in /home/challies/public_html/sites/all/modules/contrib/views/plugins/views_plugin_display.inc on line 766
About your children’s favourite drawings - get your favourite ones professionally framed and hang them in your study. What you do with these pictures now, will tell your kids something about themselves and their dad.
On the subject of children loving Aslan more than Jesus - it’s inevitable - using animal characters or fantasy to tell a bigger story - a story we think children may not be able to grasp, undermines the power and the simplicity of His incredible story.
Having said that, I love C.S. Lewis’ writings and thank God for nurturing parents who teach their children well.
I LOVED the video. Made me laugh a lot :-p
I have four kids, only one of them is an artist (another is showing some promise). So, I’ve started a blog to post my son’s work. On occasion, when the others produce something blog-worthy, I’ll scan it and hijack my son’s blog to post.
I keep hardcopies of the really good stuff.
Last advice - don’t let the 4 year old find her drawings in the trash can. Not good.
First thing — always pencil your child’s name and the date on the back of the picture, along with a description of what it is (and even why they did it). What seems obvious now will fade into oblivion faster than you would imagine.
I usually keep the most amazing pieces in a folder until the end of the year, then cull that down. I’ve also given each child a three-ring notebook where they can keep any pieces that they choose (that I’m not saving in the folder).
Lastly, here’s a resource to help store the best of the best: http://store.willowhouse.com/category.aspx?zcid=289. (U.S. addresses only)
Savor the moments!
Buy some cheap frames for the artwork, find an empty wall space, and hang them all close together. When new pieces of artwork are given to you, switch it out with one on the wall. They won’t miss the old ones and you can decide what to do with them, but they will feel continually valued and important to you. You will also save refrigerator space.
hey Tim,
My wife just told me about a binder that she saw on a website. You can just create a binder (or buy) and put the artwork in a slip in the front of it, thereby saving the art, not having lose papers everywhere, and definitely not scarring your children for the rest of their life.
Think about it.
Mark
i’ve been corrected… put the plastic sleeves in the binder, and then put the artwork in the sleeves!
Sounds much better than my original thought.
File your children’s pictures.
It saves them; it does not take up much space, assuming you have a filing cabinet already; and there is no risk of regrets later on.
You could have a bulletin board where you display the “latest.”
Also they make good backgrounds for framed pictures of your kids.
Hi Tim, I scan them all, and my children are thrilled with it. A couple pieces may also spend time on the fridge or tacked to something in the office. And from what your dad says, it sounds like they have a permanent home just waiting for them—maybe keep a big envelope handy and just send it every time it gets filled? James
To my knowledge I do not think my father has kept a single piece of art produced by his children (my mom has kept a couple from special occasions like Valentine’s day or Mother’s day). As far as I know none of us have been scared by the fact that no one cared to keep our “art” when we were little.
So my suggestion is keep it for a little while and then throw it away after they are no longer attached to it. Or if you have a fireplace you can burn it and they’ll never know it got thrown away because there will be no evidence.
We actually did plaster our bedroom walls with the art of three small daughters and left it up for 3 years or more. The walls were all mostly, entirely covered with only little spaces inbetween the numerous works. Our daughters certainly had no doubt that we valued their art work . All three of them are still artistic and “artists” at ages 16, 18 and 21. When their current art had progressed far beyond the bedroom art I did take it all down and saved the very best.
What Kim K. said. Keep it all until you give it to them.
Advice: Do not keep anything that has food (noodles, etc) glued to construction paper. Quickly round file it. Just do it.
Scanning just doesn’t work for a lot of things. Stuff kids make is often more than 2D. It needs to be held in the hand to be appreciated. Just keep it.
What Larry said…Just keep it. I have “junk” that my now 25-year-old son made when he was five or six. They are some of my most prized possessions and occupy prime shelf space in my office.
this reminds me of how david wanted to build a temple for god… or how we try to do things to impress god.