A Dozen Uses for Your Child’s Art

I hope by now your child is coloring, drawing, painting, and making collages on a daily basis. If you’ve followed the lesson plans, then you are saving your child’s art work. You have some posted above the calendar, some on the refrigerator, and maybe one hangs in the doctor’s office. But what can you do with the rest? Some preschoolers become very upset when they catch you wadding up a picture of theirs to stuff in the trash! Yet I hope you do not save every single piece of artwork they ever produce to pass on to their new spouse the day after the wedding! So what’s the answer? Here’s a few suggestions. Perhaps you will add a few of your own?

1) Print child’s name in bold block letters, cover front and back of picture with clear contact paper and use as a placemat at the dinner table.

2) Fold child’s picture in half, and in half again to make a card. Write “Thank You” on the front. Paste a square of blank white paper inside for writing a note, and use his art work as thank you notes for grandparents and friends.

3) Stack five to ten pictures together and attach into a book. Use a hole punch and brads, or staple, or punch holes and lace together with yarn – whatever works better for you. Write one word on each page, a word you want your child to learn to recognize, like his name, the word “stop”, the name of the street he lives on, your first and last name, his last name – add to the list. Use this book of his artwork as his first reader.

4) Cut out a mat from construction paper. Mat a picture and give it as a gift to a relative.

5) Cut the picture, and mat it on a bigger piece of construction paper. Put it in a glass frame and hang it in child’s bedroom.

6) Cut a sheet of clear plexiglass to fit the top of your kitchen table. (A clear vinyl tablecloth may work just as well, and cost less). Spread his artwork in a layer over the kitchen table and under the plexiglass for a one-of-a-kind display. Could dress it up by adding photographs of your child among his art pictures. Periodically replace older artwork with new.

7) Use his artwork as wrapping paper to wrap gifts.

8.) Make him a scrapbook, and cut his artwork if necessary to fit the pages, then mount it inside. You can make an inexpensive scrapbook by cutting the pages from grocery bags and attaching them together with a hole punch and yarn.

9) Have an “art wall” in the hall or his bedroom. Mount his artwork until the wall is covered. Then take a picture of the wall with your child standing in front of it. Save the picture to his photo album. Take down the art work and sneak it into the trash when he isn’t looking, only to start mounting more art on the wall.

10) Have his favorite picture mounted on heat-transfer paper. Iron on a new Tee shirt for him to display.

11) Scan a picture into the computer and use as a screensaver.

12) Wallpaper the inside of his closet or tree house with his artwork.

Tags: art, children, creativity, Early Childhood Education, Preschool