Tuesday, October 2, 2012

I Throw Out R's Art

 Now that R is in school, she comes home most days with various "artworks". She isn't old enough to make anything that looks good, or to even have a meaningful artistic sense. Her projects mostly involve things like scribbling randomly with paint (and then the teachers cut into some shape) or gluing stuff randomly (and the teachers try to guide her into gluing it in a more logical fashion). Art at this point is just about experimenting with materials, not creative self expression or making something beautiful.
"Drawing" made at home
That's great of course, and I'm really happy that she gets a chance to do that at school (I don't want to do art projects at home due to the mess/laziness factor: crayons are enough for me). But since her "art" is both pretty ugly and not a reflection of her thoughts, I don't like it.
Big shipment yesterday!
I admire it when she brings it home, and talk to her about it. We point out various interesting elements. Then we put it up on the refrigerator. Soon (often overnight) it disappears. Where? Into the trash. I haven't saved any of it.

Once she's big enough to make something more sophisticated, maybe I will save that. For now, I feel like it's just clutter.

6 comments:

  1. omg I want to throw all of it out too.....but Jon's all sensitive about it. Our new thing is that we've been mailing some of it to her grandparents :) it gets them all excited and lets me send the piece of paper with squiggles out of my household.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Postage is too expensive (since Singapore is so far) but that is a genius idea! Love it.

      Delete
  2. Ditto! T's teacher asks what we do with it and I say its in a box. But seriously, some days he draws like one line. WTF. If I were a good mom I would scan it or something, but nope.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha, I guess we can just tell them they didn't like art class and didn't do any projects (will work until elementary anyway, since no one remembers before age 4 very well).

      Delete
  3. I don't have this problem yet, but I'm sure I will. My Mom kept a small plastic tub for each of us (about the size of a gallon of milk) and kept little things from each of her kid's childhood. Instead of keeping everything you could keep 1 thing a month, then at the end of the year evaluate and par down to 2-3 things. I say this because My mom also threw out EVERYTHING, and when I saw my husband and his mom sit down to go through his childhood art/school work (she kept a lot of it), I was honestly jealous. Just an idea though. I would probably through most of it away too, and just keep this cutest things, or the ones with the most individual expression.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's so funny. My mom saved practically everything, and when I got pregnant/had R she pulled it all out and gave some of it to me. I tried to be all sentimental with her (because I know it meant a lot to her), but really what I was thinking was "What a lot of junk!" Now I feel obligated to keep it so my mom won't feel sad, which seems like a burden.

      I thought R would therefore feel relieved and free without it: the opposite didn't occur to me! I guess I will have to watch her personality carefully as she grows to see which would be the better approach.

      Delete