Ask:
Ugh!! Now that school is almost over, my kids are cleaning out their desks and bringing everything home!!! How do you wade through the piles? What to save, toss? Ugh!!!
Answer:
I have tried to only save special projects. It's hard, though. If I'm not sure I take a picture of the child holding the paper/project so that I can have that. Of course anything that is thrown away HAS to be done under the cover of night!!! :muahahahah:
Answer:
Since this was Evans first year I had bought an expanded folder for all his stuff. Now ask me when he is in 3rd grade and Josh is going I bet I will be the mom throwing stuff away in the cover of night
Answer:
Ugh! I have two bankers boxes sitting here looking at me with stuff from preschool (2 boys), kindergerden (2boys) and first grade(1).
Not to long ago, I gave them both a garbage bag and told them to go through the pile. I told them they could only through away their own things and to just keep the special projects or things that they were particularly proud of. I was surprised at how well they did! My oldest wanted to get rid of all his school work and only kept a few art projects and spelling tests. My youngest started out saying it was all "special to him" but he eventally caught on and got rid of somethings. I have been throwing their school work away daily and just keeping their projects, but the pile is much too big. I feel a MAJOR purge coming on in this department.
Maybe I should start keeping them on the same schedule as I use for my magazines now. I go by month at the end of the month, they all go because I know I'm getting new ones. If I did this with their work, I could just tell them "It's time for these to go and time for you to make new ones." Just a thought. I don't want them to grow up being pack rats like their mom.
Answer:
As far as supplies, I keep very little. We have tons of crayons, markers and pencils at home, so we don't need more. Plus the stuff they use as school seems to be more abused!
As far as art and interesting work, I keep an underbed box to put the most special stuff in all year. Then at the end of the year, I keep about 10 things for the whole year. I've made a binder for each of my girls with page protectors and dividers labeled for each year. They enjoy looking at their own books. And this year my daughter's first grade teacher sent home a book featuring her art and several papers she'd written, so I probably won't keep as much in the binder.
Answer:
I get a medium pizza box from our local Pizza Hut in August. I cover the outside with plain paper or we have even painted the outside with craft paint. Then the kids decorate it. Throughout the year anything that they want to keep or I want to keep goes into the box. Once the box is full they either have to get rid of something or stop collecting. At the end of the school year they write a little about the year and we file it away.
Answer:
Basically I throw almost everything away except for their journals...or "special, special" projects. I have all of their journals since kindergarten.
Acouple of months ago - we were going through them and the kids got a kick out of some of the things they wrote in them...some stories were so far fetched!! But it was really fun...and at least with the journals...you can see how they have progressed each year!