Comments on: Last-minute Eco-friendly Valentine’s Day Creations

By: Green Baby Guide | Making Potato Print Valentines

Green Baby Guide | Making Potato Print Valentines — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:01:31 +0000

[...] year we showed you how to recycle your magazines or your children’s finger paintings by cutting them into creative Valentines, but we decided to keep life even simpler in 2009. For [...]

By: rebecca

rebecca — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:14:33 +0000

That is a great idea, Duchess! You could also simply keep the album on the computer. Your kid could help maintain the album by adding names to the photos, organizing the photos into categories, and even emailing the album to friends and family every once in a while.

By: Duchess

Duchess — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:55:44 +0000

Another idea I heard of recently was to take digital pictures of the artwork and then get the digital pictures made into a photo book from Costco or one of the other on-line sources – much more efficient in terms of space. The question is, will you really get around to making the photo book?

By: rebecca

rebecca — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:39:12 +0000

Thanks for the comments, Eileen! I read a good tip about tossing kids’ artwork without hurting their feelings one time, which I filed away for future use. Maybe it would work for you. Each child would have a permanent art box. This box holds just a finite number of masterpieces, so if the child wants to keep something in there, she has to decide which old work to get rid of. This gives kids control over what gets kept and what gets tossed. The schoolwork would be filed in a similar way: keep everything at first, but at the end of the school year, allow the child to decide what gets kept in the “outstanding schoolwork” box.

Another tip I read was to ruthlessly recycle everything and later tell the kid that you have no idea what happened to their wonderful depictions of dinosaurs stomping on cars.

Again, I have no experience with this (yet!), so take these ideas with a grain of salt! You may very well end up decoupaging those walls. . . .

By: Eileen

Eileen — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:47:13 +0000

I love the idea of using Roscoe’s finger paints to make hearts. Your grocery bag valentine’s turned out sooo cute. ONe of my daughter’s classmates had made little felt bookmarks for each kid. I thought that was a good idea since it’s something these little early readers need. Not that a paperclip doesn’t work! We gave out pencils and erasers – again, something they would need anyway.

On the not wanting to recycle the artwork – interesting topic because I can tell your kids are young. The stuff multiplies! We are in first grade now, I have tossed about half the stuff that’s come home and I still have, from the time she could rub her fingers in poster paint, 2 boxes and 2 file cabinet drawers full of precious art. She has gotten to the age where she is deeply hurt if I don’t save every single piece, every homework assignment, every time she colored the hidden object. And now her little brother is coming up behind and every day I get a new train track design to cherish. So, I am anxiously waiting for the sage advice on what to do with the accumulation. Decoupage the furniture and walls? We could just keep adding layers and probably increase our energy efficiency.