Toddler art: should it stay or should it go?

Filed under: 2 years, Toddler, Child care, Creative projectsMy boy goes to daycare three days a week, and in his current classroom they do art projects pretty much every single day. He comes home splattered with fingerpaint, sometimes he has glitter in his hair, he's got crayon wax under his nails . . . I love it. I especially love picking him up and seeing him sitting at a table with his pint-sized classmates, studiously smearing some glue around while a patient teacher doles out cotton balls.Let's be honest: I particularly love knowing that I don't have to clean up the mess. I mean, I want to encourage my child's creativity as much as any other parent, but . . . GLUE? Dude, I'm sorry, but not in my living room, unless we've got about fifty tarps on hand.Anyway, the fallout from all this art time is a never-ending stream of papers stuffed in his cubby for us to take home. A million and one art projects, all personally created by our toddler. Which is to say, a lot of smeary, goopy, endearing little pieces of crap.(What? Oh, I can't say that? I'm sorry: many lovely works of art. Is that better? Sheesh.)So, what to do with all of these? I honestly feel like kind of an asshole throwing them away, but what's the alternative? I keep the ones that include, say, his handprints, or are especially cool in some way (or sometimes I just take a digital photo and archive that image), but the rest . . . well, they get round-filed.Am I a heartless jerk for doing this? What do you guys do with your little kids' many creative manifestos, assuming they've played out their time on the fridge or wherever?Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments