This afternoon my kids brought home the contents of their school desks. You know, everything. Every scrap of paper they have written on, every half finished work book, every broken crayon. Going through their "treasures" reminded me of one of my kid's friends. She came home with my son after school and watched in terror as I emptied out his backpack. I carefully looked over his work, commented on it, and then put it in the trash.
"You throw his papers away?" she said in disbelief. The only thing I could think was, Either you mother is more subtle than I am, or she has drawers and drawers full of crap.
Not that I regard my kids' work as useless pieces of paper. I love to see the progress they make and have them share what they are learning with me. And yes, I do save a few things. And I do mean few. Art projects they spent a lot of time on, stories that they have written, and things that I feel really represent who they are at that time in their life. I don't really think they'll need to look over every math paper they ever did, every spelling test they scored 100% on (those do get a home on the fridge for a while), and every drawing they ever made. I try to choose things that will bring back memories for them and be meaningful. If I can tuck it into their scrapbook, even better.
Some day, when I hand over their treasures to be stored in their closets, they'll thank me.
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7 comments:
I'm not much of a saver either. But woe is me if the little one finds something of hers in the garbage. It is retrieved, smoothed out and stuck back on the fridge for another go around. I have to be sneaky if I want to insure that the stuff leaves the house and stays out!
I can so relate to this (my dining room table is deluged!). I usually keep only the best of the art and their poetry ("I love the sky/Wish I could fly"). I'm so impressed you have scrapbooks! Thanks for stopping by yesterday!
I try to save only the really memorable things too! My mom was such a pack rat. She saved everything and then us kids had to clean it all out. I guess I don't want to do that to my kids. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom!
I pretty much save only the best art and creative writing samples, too. I sneakily trash things throughout the year, putting the rest in a box. Then I let the kids go through it with me at the end of the year to weed it down. It's fun to point out to them the progress they've made. (And I'm so jealous- we've still got 8 days left of school!)
I'm with you. I throw most stuff out. The really good stuff, or things that are representative of where they're at, like you said, gets laminated. I love my laminator!
My poor Snickers doesn't get out of school until June 9th...I, too, throw away everything I can without her knowing. She's in kindergarten, seriously, how many pages of copying alphabet letters does a household need anyway?? ;)
--snow
I guess there are a lot of us non savers out here. I have 6 kids and would need to rent a wing in the museum to save and display everything!
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