What to do with all the papers?

[Bry's-Gal]

My oldest LOVES to do worksheets and art projects. I get overwhelmed with how much work we have at the end of a day, let alone a week! What do you guys do with it all? Do you keep it? Trash it? What? If you keep it, how do you store it all? How long do you keep it?

[crazymama]

have you tried to maybe take pictures of things or scan them and save the pictures of them on disks? much more compressed ;)

[RoadRunner]

Pick out the nicest ones and save them in a binder. It is nice to look back on.

I know what you mean, my son is the same way. Drawings and paper airplanes ALL over the house!

[TeacherMom]

Deeenaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! Oh, hehe Deena taught me what to do with mine!
So now I keep some, what we call thier best work in a binder( or folder if that works better for you) save them and date them. The kids love to look back and see the work they did and see how much they are learning and improving.
I toss a lot m ore now! I was keeping everything in old Life Pak boxes, but it seemed like such a waste of space in the garage ... shred them!

[RoadRunner]

Smart idea to date them! I'll have to remember that.

[kbabe1968]

I keep a 3" binder - our state will require a "portfolio" and my evaluator recommended that I keep everything at first....and then after the portfolio is done to toss whatever doesn't go in.

Artwork is separate for the most part....I have an art box where they get to date their best work. When the box gets full they are allowed to pick out their favorites and we toss or give the rest away when we go to visit the nursing home (our coop does that every other month). The grandmas and grandpas at the nursing home LOVE getting pictures!

:)

[TeacherMom]

OH I like that because yes they love getting pictures!

[MamaBear]

We keep all of ours in our safe. Yes I said safe. It is a big huge safe which has lots of room, well not now since I have saved all their papers, but that is where we keep ours. :D
I tried to go through them and pick out which ones were more important than others, but they are ALL so awesome I decided they all deserved to be in the safe. You can only imagine how many there are after 13 years of schooling! :eek:

[2CalvertKids]

I have stopped pulling worksheets out of workbooks! I let them do the workbook pages and then keep them all together that way. At the end of the year, if there is something spectacular, I will pull it out and then toss the workbook just before we move on to the next school year/grade in that subject. Art, I always keep. We don't do a ton of it - especially my oldest, so I keep whatever they do. For this year, I am putting it in a folder. In the future, a few select pieces will be showcased in their school books (you know, those year by year things) and the rest will be stored in boxes for my own packrat enjoyment in later years. Maybe I will be like my dh's mom and throw them away when my kids are almost 40! LOL She waited until my husband was 37 to even part with his baby clothes!

[wolverine_jd94]

I buy the 13 pocket expand-a-files (the plastic one's at Staples). After I grade my kids stuff then they put everything in their folders. One folder for each subject. I also use one of the expand-a-files for myself to get all my master copies of everything easily contained, like blank lesson plan form, grade book forms, etc... I like these because you can fit a large quantity of papers in a small contained area.

[TeacherMom]

I lke the expanda file but what od you do with that?

[wolverine_jd94]

I lke the expanda file but what od you do with that?

Each pocket in it is used for one subject. At the end of the week the kids sit down and put all their graded papers in the different pockets. It makes storing their work a lot easier. We can easily store all their work for the whole year in each of their files and probably still have room for lots more. At the end of the year I just use a permanent marker to label the year on the file.

[TeacherMom]

But where do you put the expanda file I mean the whole thing, where do you store it for how long?

Also in regards to the not pulling work book pages, this is only my second year of using pullables ( my own word there hehe) and I decided my books will be easier if I pull them and sort them by what I want done when. I am putting in a binder with lables, then I am thinking at the end of the year I will keep what I want for ds to use in his binder, ansd the rest I will toss or burn ! wee!

[wolverine_jd94]

Sorry I misunderstood. I store them (the files) in a box. I make copies of the pages in the workbooks and then the kids work on those. Later when we're done then I'm able to pass those workbooks on to other familie's. It also helps to keep the bulk down to a minimum.

[TeacherMom]

ic cool thanks!

[Tricia]

We have to keep it here, for state law purposes for two years, yup that's alot of paper. I use a filing cabinet to store it all in, my husband found it at a yard sale.

[Actressdancer]

As far as artwork goes, we usually gather things for a few weeks then send the projects on to my family. They all live in PA, so it's nice for them to be a part of the boys' lives. I have my mom, dad, and two sets of grandparents to send to, so every 4 months someone gets an envelope of art. I do scan some of the best ones and date them. That way I still have a record of them, but it only takes up space on my computer (then onto a CD).

Since we are required to keep a "sampling" of the kids' work for our portfolios, I'll probably just keep the unit tests in a 3 ring binger with dividers for subjects. Then I'll just have to file a new binder for each child each year.

I stopped being sentimental about every little bit of paper when I looked around my house one day and decided that the prospect of moving scared the living daylights out of me. Then it was FlyLady to the rescue ;)

[TeacherMom]

ha ha Actress dancer I thought of what it would look like by the time ds got to highschool and imagined there would be no place left to store things, I decided it was just nasty old dusty papers anyway , Lol, untill I looked through them !
I recently found anothe rpile to look through in the garage, I have to figure if they are discard pile or keeps!

[FreeSpirit]

As far as artwork goes, we usually gather things for a few weeks then send the projects on to my family. They all live in PA, so it's nice for them to be a part of the boys' lives. I have my mom, dad, and two sets of grandparents to send to, so every 4 months someone gets an envelope of art. I do scan some of the best ones and date them. That way I still have a record of them, but it only takes up space on my computer (then onto a CD).

Since we are required to keep a "sampling" of the kids' work for our portfolios, I'll probably just keep the unit tests in a 3 ring binger with dividers for subjects. Then I'll just have to file a new binder for each child each year.

I stopped being sentimental about every little bit of paper when I looked around my house one day and decided that the prospect of moving scared the living daylights out of me. Then it was FlyLady to the rescue ;)

HA! A fellow Flybaby! Knew I'd find some on here! :)

DD 7 puts her favorite work on a bulletin board and the rest either goes to grandma, great grandma or the big circular bin in the sky!

[Honor]

you could get some cheap dollar store frames and "frame" the best art work or the 100% spelling test or whatever and then change it every so often.... and I send lots of stuff to family that lives out of state too... and i have a big box... special stuff goes in everything eles gets trashed.

[ElizabethB]

Clear clamp binders from Staples hold up to 100 pages, no hole punching or putting into plastic sleeves. You can get colored ones at other office stores or Amazon, but then you'd have to label them. I just put the year on the back of the last page of artwork and choose the best for the cover to show through the clear binder.

I save good artwork in a drawer, then at the end of the year go through and find the best, keeping at least 4 of each type of drawing/painting I like. I put them in 4 piles, then put them into 4 clamp binders. One for each set of Grandparents as a Christmas present, one for me and one for my daughter! (I had 3 piles the first year, but she wanted her own that she could touch and keep in her room.) This year I'll make 4 piles for my son, too.

I have saved some sample work from this years homeschooling, but it has not been culled or placed in a clamp binder yet.

[rmcx5]

Right now, ours are in rubbermaids in the garage. I plan to go through them and just have the "best" and any tests (we only typically do math tests right now).

I do have most of their art projects from the HS art class.

Rhonda

[Emma's#1fan]

We keep ours in boxes in the garage. The art that I really like, we keep framed or in a special box in the house.