So, here’s a fun little project that I have gotten all caught up on lately. At an enrichment meeting about organization at Sonia Cole’s house last year someone made the suggestion of scanning children’s art work, and then making a computer screensaver out of it. I liked the idea of scanning the artwork, and so I decided to make art books for each of the boys. I was glad to come up with a good way to keep their artwork organized and to have it accessible for them to look at anytime they want. Plus, this way we won’t end up with a cardboard box of old frail falling-apart art projects that lose little pieces of paper and glitter every time they are touched because the glue has dried out or the tape has stopped sticking. Also, I don’t have to try to figure out how to fold up a painting done on an oversized piece of construction paper – I can just scan the picture and print it out in the size to fit their books. So, whenever the kids have a fun picture or project that I like, I put it in a pile in my computer desk, and then every once in a while I take a little time to scan all of the pictures in the pile (or, if it is something that won’t fit into the scanner I just take a picture of it). I add the date and a description, if needed, and then print the pictures out and slip them into plastic page protectors in each child’s art book. That way they can flip through anytime they like and see the pictures they did when we first traced around their little hands as babies up through their most recent masterpieces. The boys like to sit down with each of their books and compare the pictures that are similar (from when they were in the same preschool or art classes), and then show each other the ones that are different because they did them on their own. It’s fun for them to see that I value their work enough to make a nice book out of it, and for me to see them enjoying the books that I took the time to put together. Here are some of their masterpieces:
