I HATE kid's crafts.
Whew.
I've been wanting to say that all morning, without sounding like a horrible mother...still sounds bad, but it's still true.
Anyway...the paper, glue, paint... it's never cute to my eyes. Just messy.
I love the pictures the girls draw, but I'm talking about the things Sera brings home from mother's day out like the paper groundhog on a Popsicle stick coming out of a Styrofoam cup.
Hate it.
I'm not very artsy, as far as visual art goes, so maybe that's why.
I need to work on fostering a better appreciation for it myself, and that's probably why I tend to shy away from letting the girls go at a piece of paper with feathers and a glue stick.
Perhaps you all can help me in my journey to become a more art-tolerant mama by helping me out with the following issues:
1. MESS.
Okay, I know what you all will say. Get over it. I'm preemptively making a note of that and reconciling it with my brain who argues that it only functions in a glitter free space.
2. STORAGE.
What IN the world do I do with all these projects Sera brings home?
I already have stacks and stacks of drawings which I am not quite sure what to do with.
Do I throw them out when she's not looking? Store them in a GIANT box in the garage?
She would freak out if I even suggested only keeping a few favorites, so consulting her is NOT an option.
Anyway, back to the groundhog.
He's fallen off his stick, and the Styrofoam cup is coming apart. She wants me to fix it, and everything within me just wants to let him permanently hibernate in the trash receptacle.
We have a very small living space. I keep it very organized for it's size, but there is not room for extra items showing up.
For example, all of the girls' toys have a proper storage place, and when all is clean at the end of the day, there are NO toys showing except for a couple of exceptionally cute wooden ones in their room.
The toys IN their room, get put away in containers in the closet or under the bed.
I have a zero tolerance policy for toys in the living room, den, dining room, or elsewhere in the house.
But as the crafts multiply, I have no place to put them, and then I walk into the hallway, see half a groundhog on the floor, and practically have a panic attack because I know there is no spot for him, and he is going to wind up crumpled, sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting to be fixed, creating counter space clutter, which in turn brings on another panic attack. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
*ahem*
Thoughts?
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
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11 comments:
Well, for flat crafts and drawings, why don't you make scrapbooks? The 12x12 kind. You can get them very cheap at Walmart or online and they are expandable. Most come with 20 pages and each page is basically a white sheet of paper in a plastic that you can just slip the drawings into on both sides.
You can buy more pages as needed and even get bigger posts to allow the scrapbook to hold more.
You wouldn't even have to glue it.
I wouldn't keep EVERYTHING, just the more special ones. Or, you could even stack multiple drawings on top of eachother, then put them in a sleeve and later she could pull them out to see them?
The plastic should keep the glitter and everything contained so you don't have a mess, and will protect the pics at the same time.
For the bigger, weird shaped 3D type crafts, what if you gave her a shelf in her room and told her she could only keep 10 things at a time. So, when a new one comes in, an old one goes out? Its kind of a good lesson!
If you didn't want to have them on display, you could do a box instead.
My mom kept basically every thing I ever made/drew in a huge box and gave it to me when I moved out. Honestly, there was so much and it was so unorganized I just got rid of everything. A scrapbook or 2 would have been nice though.
Let us know what you decide and good luck!
Another way to do the scrapbooks, is to scan the image into your computer and upload them into Shutterfly, and then put them together in a "Photo Book", they print it up... year book style and send it to you. You can also order additional copies at a discounted price to give as a Christmas or Brithday gift to Grandmas. And they turn out really nice. Then you have a nice, slimline, professional looking collection of your daughters artwork... and I would imagine it would be a really neat thing for your daughter to see as well. A real book, with all her own artwork. I saw the idea on an organization segment on Oprah.
www.shutterfly.com I love their 12x12 photo cover books.. all the ones we have done have turned out great!
As for the kiddo's bulky crafts.. hmmm. No clue. I am not looking forward to those days myself, as I dont think they are all that cute either. Every now and then they make a cute one, but most of them end up leaving a trail of glitter behind, or starts falling apart and just clutters up space. So I'm totally with you there.
I feel like you do but I am a dichotomy in that I love kids crafts, adult crafts, visual art what have you...I hate mess though I do tolerate it in the midst of the process itself. As far as fostering it at home what I did was set up an easy to use system. I have a three level drawer set in my kitchen, the wooden kind where the drawers completely come out. I keep the bottom biggest drawer full of paper and then the other drawers have supplies in them, crayons, bingo daubers, glue sticks, and two drawers with collage materials of all sorts. Indy can get to it on her own but for the most part I usually set her up at the kitchen table with a project by removing the whole drawer so everything always stays in it's place and goes right back when we are done. I don't keep much. We use a lot for wrapping gifts and then a few are on a bulletin board that is right now in the kitchen but that is only because I'm still finishing the one that will go in her room. I hate the look of bulletin boards so I found a vintage round frame, removed the glass and covered the insert with cork board and then covered that with polka dotted material. So she will be able to hang her pictures up in her own room on her board and it won't look horrible.
As far as keeping I have only hung onto the pieces that either she has really loved or I have (though I wait weeks with it sitting on a shelf hidden away in case she asks about it but if a month goes by and she hasn't it gets recycled). I got photo boxes at target (they are heavy cloth covered cardboard boxes that are only 3 inches high so they store well and look nice out or can easily fit on a shelf. We have very little space here so so far we've kept it to one box...though with how much she's making now I might have to up that.
It's tough. I thy to look at each piece and think about how she might appreciate it when she is older. If it's just scribbles of lacks in much design I tend to toss it.
Oh and one other thing I just recently did because of all the paper she was going through and making me crazy was to get a small white board and some pens. Often that is what she uses and then we just clean it off! woo hoo...fun was had, almost no mess (though she does get pen on herself but no biggie), and nothing to keep.
hope something in that long rant was helpful!
I'm all over this post.
It's all about bulletin boards in their room. They each get one and they each get to display what they bring home. It's their space and they get to decide where things go. You can have them high up so they won't swallow the tacks.
Or they could each have a little box that fits under the bed where they could keep projects, then they would have to get rid of things as it becomes to full to close.
When you think of crafts, don't think of things that you have to do and have something at the end. Think of things that they can experience and enjoy and then it goes away, like shaving cream, or "painting" with water on the side of the garage, or "sculpting" with corn starch and water. This is all summer type things for outside, but give me a minute and I'll think of indoor stuff you can do.
Also. Don't be afraid of paint, like as in using an easel. Get some butcher paper and throw it on the ground. or a tarp for that matter or an old sheet that you can scoop up and throw in the wash and don't forget about using a couple of josh's old shirts as smocks.
And throw the damn groundhog away!
Haha, Dawson came home with the SAME EFFING GROUNDHOG craft. He kept calling it a gopher, do they really expect preschoolers to grasp the concept of an old superstition when they have barely learned their seasons?!
Ours met his maker after the kids were sound asleep in their beds last night.
I only keep the 'special' projects, the others go in a little inconspicuous spot in the kitchen after we talk about whatever it is, and then I 'put them away' later in the week (in the trash) safely hidden underneath coffee filters and banana peels so nobody gets their feelings hurt, except for the few that are meaningful that go in the filing cabinet.
I read in a magazine about super sentimental/ organized mothers who take digital pix of the projects and then store them in a special folder on the computer or print the pix and put them in an album for the kid.
Depending how 'mother of the year' you really feel... haha.
xo
i can make you feel better in a second... i hate kids.
I was going to say something similar to Sarah Griffin. Take a digital picture of it or scan it into the computer. Save them onto discs by year and child. Then they can keep their stuff FOREVER!
Unlike you, I do not have this particular problem. I just gather up whatever leftover crafts or paintings that are lying around the house at the end of the day and THROW THEM AWAY! If they want to keep them they better be in their rooms on their desk or somehow put away or they are gone. They will make more tomorrow, trust me. :-) I do save some that are particularly funny or cute.
For example: Israel lost a tooth on Saturday. Then he accidently dropped it down the drain while examining his tooth gap. So, I told him that if he wrote a note to the tooth fairy explaining the situation, maybe the tooth fairy would leave him something anyway. (Sneaking homeschooling writing assignment.) So, he did. It said: "Dear Tooth Fairy, please leave me a dollar, even though I lost my tooth, please. Thank you. I love you, Mommy."
hehehehehe! I guess the tooth fairy is a flabby post-partum woman in a pink nightshirt.
I'm saving this note!
About the mess....all I can say is that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Ever made a groundhog on a stick? You might find it unexpectedly fun. :-)
One good way to control mess is to get a big plastic tablecloth, and put it under any projects the girls work on, like play-doh or painting.
What if you only allowed three projects to be kept (and you always keep them magnet-ed onto the fridge), and she can switch out the new ones she brings home for the olds ones? Or give her a container in her room that she can put whatever she wants in and let her keep them in there. Then they're hidden, so everything is still organized, but she still gets to keep her treasured art!
MAN. You are all awesome.
I've got a ton of ideas now.
I really do want to work towards Sera being less of a pack rat, and being able to get rid of stuff...
Anyway, I especially like Summer's white board and pen idea...
For the special drawings, I might save a couple, and scan a lot of the other ones...
I'll still secretly throw some stuff away, and try to encourage Sera to get rid of stuff.
Daja-that picture sounds amazing! Kids are sooo funny.
Your post and all the comments and suggestions about art and craft projects were very helpful for me to read. Natalie is just getting into crafts and hasn't created much worth creating (she often ends up destroying it herself, anyway).
Anyway, all this feedback will give me a good jump on future craft issues. I love crafts (except glitter, though I'm getting better about that), and I love seeing what Natalie creates. It's especially fun when Natalie loves what she does, and I'm quite sentimental, so I love the idea of photographing everything (it's what I do with my own projects)!
Perhaps you could follow some advice you once gave me: make a craft blog :) Maybe when Natalie gets older I'll help her create her own craft blog so she can share her creativity with all of her family and be able to revisit her favorite projects any time...
So, thanks for the rant and all the feedback it elicited!
saw this today and thought of you :)
http://www.cookiemag.com/magazine/blogs/nesting/2009/03/diy.html
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