Jen is a work-at-home mom, parent to three, and she’s been a stepparent for over 15 years. She is well-equipped to discuss and write about the great, and the not-so-great, details of all-things-parenting. Along with spending quality time with her family, Jen enjoys music, chocolate, camping and relaxing. And laughing!
My three children love to color! And I love them to color, and create, but I often find myself inundated with paper art that I don’t know what to do with. Save it all?
Throw it away? Gasp! Maybe you’ve never stood over the trash can with a piece of child art, wavering… only to tuck it away in yet another storage-bin because you “just couldn’t throw it away”? I know I have.
How about taking pictures of the art before getting rid of it? Somehow organizing all the photos of the many, many pieces of art my children create seems… well… did I mention I have three kids? Who has time for all that?
Here’s a quick idea to keep the art flowing in your home while helping to clear clutter. Bonus: It’s also a lesson for your children to be mindful of their carbon footprints.
I bought three dry erase boards, and I keep a constant supply of dry erase markers coming in. My children love them! For Christmas this year, I upgraded our boards to color-bordered boards so each child knows “whose is whose”…I now have six dry-erase boards, and the “extras” prove useful for play dates. (I recommend buying a couple “extras” just for this reason.)
At approximately $5 per board, and markers running between $5 and $10 per pack, depending on how many you purchase, the initial start-up is not much more than a few boxes of markers and pads of paper, and you can re-use the boards again and again. (We use old hemp liners from our cloth-diaper-days for washable erasers, but they, too, aren’t very expensive should you buy erasers.)
My children use their boards in the morning at their little table while waking up, take them with us in the car and “quiet coloring” in bed is one of their favorite evening activities before books/night-night time. The boards have become “chore charts” at times, tic-tac-toe/hang-man/connect-the-dots platforms, meal planners, and even combination art (as in putting all six together for a mural).
The beauty of dry-erase boards abounds! As mentioned, they are an opportunity to talk with your little ones about “carbon footprints”, and our need to do what we can to reduce waste. But mostly, your child knows the dry erase art is semi-permanent — and so do YOU. No standing over the trash can, wavering. No external hard-drives needed for a million photos. No hard feelings.
I have taken a photo or two of pictures one child really liked, or hung a board for a day-or-two of a special piece. But then, as they rub away with their little erasers…who knows what’s next to come? I look forward to it each time, on many levels.
