What are you saving from your child's kindegarden year?

[lalasmama]

Title pretty much says it all.... What are you saving from your child's kindergarden year of school? I'm up to my elbows in papers, and can't decide what to keep or toss.

[happymomma]

We are also in the process of deciding what to keep. So far, I've kept his special art projects that he has done at school. In addition, I've kept a lot of his writing papers. I can definitely see a difference from the beginning of school to now. They have to write their weekend news (what they did during the weekend). I love reading it and am putting it into a booklet. I also saved his report cards. That's about it. I didn't really save his worksheets that they do.

[infomama]

Everything.

[SnuggleBuggles]

LOL!! Everything is still a bag in the basement and ds1 is almost done with 2nd grade.

Beth

[maybeebaby08]

I saw on Oprah a few years ago to scan or take pictures of the artwork, stories, etc and then put them all in a photobook. I thought it was a good idea to save everything but not have it take up ton of space.

[geochick]

I recently went through our pile, and organized it by category (art, spelling, math, tests, etc.). My plan now is to keep 5 of the most representative things from each category (the cute story about how he'd save the Thanksgiving Turkey, the first handwriting of the year, the last handwriting of the year, a few math tests, etc.). I think I'll hole-punch the gems, and keep a 1/2 inch binder for each year. I'll let my ds pick some stuff too. He made several books this year (dinos, planets, etc.). We'll keep all of the books.

[hellokitty]

Lol, I need to do this too. I have been so busy, I stuck it all into one big pile. I weeded a lot of things out throughout the yr, that went straight into the trash. There are some very cute things that he made, like for mother's day they did a, "recipe" for each student and the teacher made a book out of it. OMG, it was so sweet and cute, my son's was literally the most bizarre and funny one (I had other parents coming up to me to tell me how hard they laughed reading my son's). I also kept some of his picture and sentence combos, b/c the pictures are so funny. Like regular worksheet schoolish type of stuff, I just pitched. The problem is I am going to have to try to figure out how to organize stuff for each yr of school. Someone told me about the pizza box idea (one pizza box worth of stuff for each yr), but man, that is STILL a big space hog!

[sarahsthreads]

I've pretty much gotten rid of the worksheets as they've come home. Actual artwork I've kept in one of those expanding files - I should probably weed it down a bit, though I'm considering just keeping the whole file for now and sorting through it in the future. Any stories (they did several writing workshops where they wrote and illustrated 4-6 page stories) I'll definitely keep long-term.

She just brought home her poetry binder and her handwriting workbook today. I'm sort of torn about the workbook - it's pages and pages of painstakingly formed letters, which were clearly a ton of work for her to do, but...is this something that anyone is going to care to go back and look at in 20 years?

I'm probably not the best person to ask, anyway. I still have a box of my own favorite essays and reports that I wrote througout my school career!

Sarah

[lalasmama]

We're moving, so I knew that if I didn't tackle this project, it would be a whole box-o-papers to deal with at the new house.... so here's what I decided to keep:

• Writing journals-- to demonstrate her first writings to the end of kindy
• Awards/Special Recognitions/Programs from her Music Recital
• Grade Reports/Reading and Writing Assessment
• About 6 pages with drawings--she draws adorable panda bears, some funny mice, and a cute picture of she and I at the park... oh, and the zoo animals that have two legs pointing to the bottom of the page, and two legs pointing to the top of the page, kind of like she --SPLAT!-- them like a bug!
• Math page-- it was a story problem--2 ants, 6 legs each, how many all together--and she drew 2 ants each with 6 legs up, 6 legs down (there's the SPLAT bugs again!) so there's 24 legs
• A poem about starting kindy so small and scared, learning and growing and becoming a first grader

So glad it's done so I don't have to think about it after the move! Now to help her fill out the "memory book" (like 8 pages) from her teacher, and for me to fill out the little School Memories book I bought when she was like 3....

[bigsis]

Aside from the special projects that the PPs have mentioned, I'm keeping the "beginning" and "end" of the school year. That way, you can see how much they've progressed---mostly with their handwriting. HTH!