Artwork

  I mentioned that I do a deep cleaning spurt when my dad is in town.  He left this morning which means the accumulation begins again, but it feels good for the time being!  One of the things that I got done that I had been Dreading (with a capital D), is organizing my cupboard where I stuff important paperwork to be filed and artwork I want to keep.

 

  I absolutely adore the kid's artwork.  I'm not talking every piece that comes home that is colored or manufactured, those pretty much go straight into recycling.  However, their little drawings that start as blobs and eventually evolve into intricately detailed works of their imagination and creativity, those I want to keep forever.  A while back, I started taking pictures of the good stuff and putting it into a Blurb book.  I try to date it, but if I don't I at least get the correct year it was made.  It is so fun to look through and see how their art changes.  And this way, I only keep the REALLY good pieces, but still have memories of the rest of it.

 

  All that said, when I was sorting through art this past week, I thought I'd share some here.

 

Hannah's most recent family picture

 

LOVE finding her doodles around the house!

  She is SOOO into making books.  She has all kinds of ideas--chapter books (long stories), short stories, baby books, how to's, all about a subject, things she likes, etc.  Her First Grade Bible just melts my heart and the other book's title is just amazing.  Unfortunately, most all of her books are unfinished.  I try to encourage her to do more in each book, but she's already onto another idea.

 

  One of her books below:

 

 Not sure if you can read it, but I think if you click on it you can zoom in.

 

Another part of her book.  :) 

     This a very recent drawing of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon.  Basically better than I could draw.

 

Lastly, she also likes to make lists.  So funny and cute!!

Someone loves to write his name!

  I also like to keep these to show how far they have come in tracing letters.  This was Joel's second try last September.  The first one was pretty much a scribble fest.

If you asked Calvin to draw something a few months ago, this is what you would get.

"One of these mans is in California and one of these mans is in Seattle."  This is from last spring/early summer.

More recent picture of people, still very similar, but with a bit more detail and many, many fingers.

  Calvin's first drawing of an animal that was not a stick figure, this was about a month ago.  Imagine the stick people he drew above, but on their side, that was how he drew animals.  I was so impressed with this!

 

  You might be completely overwhelmed with the thought of keeping some of your kid's artwork, but at least take a picture of some of the really good ones.  My grandma recently gave me some art I did when I was little and spent time with her and it was so fun to go through!  I know that there is even an app to make this process easier (that I have never used, but my friend uses) called Artkive. You take a picture and it stores it for you so that you can make a book.  I've also heard of others storing art in a folder for the entire school year and at the end of the year only saving a few pieces and getting rid of the rest.  Honestly, if I was to be just starting, I would totally do Artkive, way more convenient and easier than my method.  Unfortunately, I started doing this before the days of smartphones and already have my system down.