School is out for the summer, which means it’s time for my annual post on “how to organize kids’ schoolwork.” (Scroll to the bottom of this post to see what we did with the vast majority of my son’s schoolwork this year!)
How to Organize Kids’ Schoolwork
1. When your children get home, ask them to sort through their papers to pick out their favorites. If your children seem to want to keep everything, set a limit of perhaps 15 papers each. Keep those in a small stack.
2. Now it’s your turn to sort through what’s left. If you have a hard time deciding what to keep and what to toss, ask yourself: Is this schoolwork some of the best work little Jimmy has ever done? Is it really representative of who he was at that age? Is this a piece that will still be meaningful 20 years from now? Try to whittle the stack down to no more than 15 additional pieces. Trust me when I say that your grown children are not going to want to look at more than 30 pieces of their old schoolwork from each grade once they are adults.
4. Recycle the rest of the papers. Check to see if artwork covered in glitter or paint can be recycled in your area. I know in Portland they cannot be recycled.
5. Store the papers that made the cut in file folders in a filing cabinet, in a big portfolio, in this artwork-saver from HearthSong or in big bubble envelopes (see image above). We just stack the bubble envelopes on a deep shelf in his bedroom closet.
As promised, here is what we did with most of my son’s schoolwork. Turns out, workbooks make excellent kindling. 🙂