Your Children’s Masterpieces

Whether your child is in preschool or high school they are guaranteed to bring home more than a few pieces of artwork. It could be a finger painting, a self-portrait, or a three-dimensional clay figure – whatever it is, it’s going to need a home – in your home. Don’t find yourself knee-deep in leaf rubbings by Thanksgiving! Here are some helpful hints for organizing and managing the onslaught of children’s artwork that comes home during the school year.

To prevent your home from becoming an art studio you will, as usual, need to sort and purge. There is no need to keeping every drawing, painting, and papier-mâché creation – sit down with your budding Picasso and involve them in the sorting and purging process. After all, it is their artwork and you may not fully appreciate what it means to them. Tell your child that you would like to create a safe home for their artwork but not all pieces can stay. Gather the artwork in question and ask your child which pieces they like the best—those will be displayed or stored.

Once the pieces have been chosen, create a gallery space in your home—it can be in the child’s room or a more public space such as the kitchen, hallway or family room. Some ways of displaying artwork are:

• Mount magnetic strips on your wall – IKEA is a great place to find these.  This is a super easy way to keep art seasonal and current

• Frame the artwork.  You can use a frame from your local photo store or get a frame specifically designed for this purpose which allows you to easily slide the pieces in and out so that you are able to change it often

• And then there is the always faithful ‘FunTak.’ Either blue or green in color, it is a sticky substance that will adhere to both the artwork and the wall without leaving a mark when it’s time to take it down.

When in doubt, there’s always the fridge!

Over their school career, your child will probably create a few works of art that you deem worthy of keeping for posterity. But where will you keep them so they don’t get ruined?  Plastic or cardboard portfolios are perfect for protecting flat paintings, drawings, etc. from getting ripped and bent out of shape. As usual under the bed storage bins are a great way to keep your special pieces safe. For three-dimensional pieces, designate a shelf or use a bookshelf in your child’s room for display
There may come a time when artwork comes into the house that is bigger than your designated storage space. Photography to the rescue!  Buy a photo album and create an ‘art album’ for each child. When photographing the piece of art, take one picture of just the art and, if they’d like, one picture with your child standing next to or holding the piece.

You can also keep a few pieces throughout the school year to use for other interesting projects.  You could laminate small pieces and turn them into placemats or select twelve pictures and make a calendar as a gift.  One of our favourites is to use the larger paintings as gift wrap.

Take the time to organize and recognize the artistic accomplishments of your budding Picasso. Displaying, preserving and photographing their artwork will honour your children’s artistic spirit and transform your home.