Hi! I'm new here. I've been lurking for a while and am now inspired! I'm cleaning every room in my house!
My question is: What do other parents do with their child's old homework? My son is in 8th grade and I have 8 years worth of math, reading, writing, and art assignments. Why am I keeping this? Will I regret getting rid of it?
Help!
You decide just how much space you're willing to give the homework. Maybe it's a pizza box for each year, or just a plastic file folder. Then you spread out the homework and start culling. You want to save the cutest and best stuff, or perhaps just one math test out of fifty. If you end up with more than will fit in the storage container you've chosen, you cull again.
I assure you that you won't regret throwing out 95% of the stuff. What's left is the best, or the most representative. That's the stuff that will make you go "Oooh" when you look through the materials again. Or possibly terminally embarrass your child when he/she grows up and brings home a significant other. To whom you can show the old homework and the naked baby pictures.
I let my son pick one thing a week; sometimes I pick one or two as well. We punch holes in it an put it in a binder.
Since mine is in kindergarten, we also mail drawings & stories off to the grandparents and other interested adults. My mom displays one at a time and recycles the old ones.
I would let your son create a portfolio that represents his best work over the course of his elementary experience. Then, as a recognition of the 8th grade move-up to high school, set the rest free by recycling or burning it all.
I teach 8th graders and see the amount of paper they accumulate in their binders in just a few weeks. Homework is practice, for the most part. It is always nice to keep a paper the teacher made nice comments on, or that the child was extremely proud of. As Zora said, the "wow" papers will sell themselves.
It's like having 45 photos of the child on the same day. If you are lucky, you will have one awesome picture, and 44 that don't keep your interest.
If it's good artwork I stick it in a frame and hang it on the wall, it has to be something really special though. Writing: I maybe save one thing a year per kid, though ds2 hasn't really started writing stories yet. I send stuff to my parents as they like that kind of thing, a few years ago I made a scrapbook of all their art stuff from the year and made it into a Christmas present for my parents. Maths, I so wouldn't bother, ditto pretty much anything else non-creative. Life is too short to keep that kind of crap, ask yourself is it unique, would you enjoy looking at it in 30 years time? The answer is almost always no! I visited my parents' house last year and we found a story I'd written when I was about 15 which won a prize, I'd completely forgotten about it and was happy to read it, that is about the level which is worth keeping :) I reckon maybe one or 2 things per YEAR max, not per week!
Oh, geez. This was me several years ago. My oldest is now a 7th-grader, but I homeschooled for 1st and then kept a goodly chunk of work through 3rd.
Then my mother-in-law moved and de-cluttered a ton of my husband's elementary-level work on us. We were swimming in her cast-off memories for weeks and he was very resentfull and left most of it for me to resolve.
Realizing how very little ANY of it meant to him, I woke up.
Your son will likely NEVER have any warm and fuzzy feelings over his 5th grade art projects and certainly will never fondly leaf through his old multiplication work.
Pull out anything worth framing -- seriously. If you are not willing to spend a certain dollar amount, say $50, on it to have it framed and hung appropriately, then chuck it.
As for the academic stuff, keep his report cards in a slim binder or file and recycle the rest.
With 5 kids, I had to be fairly particular in what I kept. A few things per year per kid, is really enough. I've gone thru it all a few times over the years and have managed to get it manageable. I now have one large cardboard storage box that all their stuff fits in. It is mainly stories/papers as opposed to math or science things. I also have a small plastic bin that has their clay/other type pieces in. In our old house, where they mostly grew up we had a back door, landing area that I would show off their artwork. If it didn't come home matted I would use large pieces of construction paper to back the art work, and it was an ever changing gallery of all their work for many years. I saved the best and rolled them up and into the storage box they went.
Thank you so much for ideas! I think I was approaching this all wrong. I had the mentality of "all or nothing." Either I was supposed to keep it all, or toss it all. I like the suggestions of keeping just a few items from each school year - and I especially like how to choose which items to keep. If I think it is worthy to be framed - it stays! Thank you! I know what I'm tackling next!
My son is now an art major in college and was always very prolific with his artwork, which means I was swimming in a sea of "too precious to throw out" drawings, cartoons and paintings, etc. A few years ago I really pared it down, keeping only the very best and making them ready for display-framed a very few, put others in scrapbooks or notebooks. Anything oddly sized or difficult to store that I wanted to remember was photographed and the original discarded.
In hindsight, I wish I had photographed him with his artwork at the time. How much more special to see a photo of an adorable 4 year old holding up his latest "masterpiece", than even having the masterpiece itself! Now, with digital photography, that task would be easy to manage and would greatly reduce the amount of paper items you would need to store.
As for other homework, I'd save it only if it were something extremely special. I can't imagine that he would ever want to revisit piles of old homework.
Report cards are a whole other deal, though. I treasure an old report card of my dad's, one of the most intelligent and academic people I've ever known, showing him failing physical education!
I keep everything that involves originality or creativity. I keep it by scanning it, then keeping the things I don't feel a strong emotional attachment to. I keep it because my mother tossed everything I ever did, perhaps because she hates clutter, but mostly because she doesn't value me.
aw, that's sad Jude :(
Talking of children's artwork, my 5 year old has been hard at work recently making a book. Its title: 'how to clean' :) He has pictures of children wiping surfaces and washing windows, absolutely hilarious!
lottielot: maybe he's another Danny Tanner from Full House. That book will be a keeper, show it to him when he's grown and living in his bachelor apartment!
i'm sorry, Jude :(
A relative frames the best of her two kids' artwork and displays them on the wall above her staircase. In a separate area she displays yearly photos of both kids. They are real conversation starters!
Paperdog, I like the idea of taking photos of the kids with their artwork. Mine are preschoolers, so I let them play with their school creations. They have fun with what they've made, and it gets demolished pretty quickly. I am a sucker for anything with handprints, all of those are saved in small flat IKEA paper box for each child.
@ Jude
I would guess that you are basing your comment on more than just the lack of kept schoolwork, but my parents never kept any of mine and I never kept any of my children's. Just never occured to me to do so. I hated school, as did two out of my three, and I certainly didn't want any reminders.
But I never felt my parents undervalued me, and it wasn't a reflection on my opinions of my children either.
Only thing I was left with from school was the shirt I made for my needlework exam, and I wore that for years, but I could just as easily have made that at home as I did most of my other clothes.
I'm 17 so this is recent stuff for me.
I have nothing from primary school (up to age 11) as we were never given stuff to keep. Possibly my parents have some stuff but that's not my problem.
My secondary school books: I've separated out the ones for the subjects I'm still studying and the others are gradually being used as fuel for bonfires. After exams we had a burning party and I burnt all my revision then so that's dealt with.
On the other hand, my brother is a maths undergraduate and insists he keeps his maths books from when he was 11 just in case he ever needs to refer to them. Because clearly he has yet to grasp those concepts.......?????
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