Honoring Your Child’s Artwork

A few tips for maintaining and honoring your child’s artwork.

Do you have a child that loves arts and crafts?

Young children often spend time working on arts and crafts as a way of exploring and learning about their world and expressing their ideas and feelings. It is a way for them to develop cognitive and motor skills that can aid in the later development of more complex skills.

This desire to explore and express themselves through a variety of materials, along with mark making and other art tools can produce MANY "treasures".

The reality is that most early art work is just about the process of making it...the fun in doing it...the activity of figuring out how an art tool or materials works...  It isn't always about the product.

But when it is about the product (for the child), then - How do we honor their interests and efforts?

• Acknowledge their work by asking them about it - Tell me about your artwork? 

• Write what your child dictates about their work on a separate piece of paper.

• Take a photo of their artwork

• Make a book of the photos or print out a few on a pieces of paper (add stories or thoughts)

• Create a display shelf / top of dresser or wall area (use a clipboard, corkboard, clothesline or interchangeable picture frame to change out the pieces) As new pieces are created, remove or discard old pieces that no longer feel as special or physically fit in the allowed spaces.  Defining the space provides natural boundaries for the amount of stuff that can be maintained.

• Get a MY ARTWORK container that will fit under a couch or bed to store artwork.  Once full, that's it.  If she wants to keep a new piece, suggest getting rid of an older piece.

• Use your child's MEMORY BOX for the most special pieces that you or he can't part with.  (The memory box can include other keepsakes as well - clothes, toy, papers, etc. that may represent a moment in your child's life)