K's Artwork

K hard at work on another masterpiece

K, my oldest daughter, started making art a few short years ago.  Mostly just scribbles and doodles that didn't look like anything but then they started to take shape. We enrolled her in the First School at the Magic House. For you that don't' know, the Magic House is the wonderful children's museum here in Saint Louis that has great programs, special events, and just generally fun stuff for kids to do almost every day of the year.

When she started that, the amount of priceless artwork in this house exploded and of course I couldn't bear to give up anything. I had been reading over and over again on the internet about taking photos of the artwork, making a book of it and recycling the originals as to not have it take over her room or the house.  It was a good theory but it had already started to pile up in her closet on the top shelf and of course, I was going to look at it later....right.

Now she is in her first of two years of preschool and every day comes home with a drawing. Some she likes more than others. I told myself that I had to buckle down and only save five a month  or  five a holiday.  I thought it a good goal to start with. I know I'll have to pare down more than that  but come on now people, baby steps.  So I got it all down the other day and started to go through it.

Some of it I was on the ball with and wrote dates on it as soon as I got it  and others I kinda remember when she made it  like the season or time of  year.

I found a piece of foam board I had bought for another project and some pins for sewing. I put in in front of my back door with some decent light and started snapping away.  Here is some of the priceless artwork that we  now have on display.

These are her people. Usually it's me or her.

So what to do with the rest of  the art that isn't recycled? I bought a under  the bed box for the older stuff right now and it will go in there. The most recent artwork will be displayed on our wall gallery in the basement. ( In a blog post to follow). That way S  can start to display her doodles as well.

S and her smock. Notice the watercolor by her mouth, yum.

They can both feel proud of all that they accomplish in crayon and watercolor.