Friday, November 30, 2007

School Papers

I am constantly amazed and frustrated by the amount of paper that my children bring home each night. Most of it appears to be busy work, but you never know how much that busy work means to a child. I try hard to keep a few things, but many need to be discreetly moved to the recycle box during the night. Sarah comes home the other day with no less than 12 different paper items all of which she is extremely proud of. I asked which things she wanted to keep in the keep box for school papers. She carefully went through the pile and moves all of the papers to the keep pile. After that she says, "Can I have my own file folder box to keep things in, I just can't trust you, you throw things away?" Nothing like a child to keep you honest. Meanwhile that trader of an oldest child is discreetly laughing at my situation from behind her back. Her own box seems like a good idea to me.

4 comments:

Mandee said...

I shudder to think how much paper Madelyn goes through coloring and other such "busy work". Like you I save a little and the rest quietly finds its way to the garbage bin...does that make me a bad mom?

Suebee said...

I obviously don't think so.

Emma Jo said...

I think that her own box is a good idea..as long as she is in charge of it for every move for the rest of her life and you can give it to her permanently when she moves out. We have killed forests of trees from our family alone, I'm sure.

GRK_MMM said...

With eight of them bringing home things, Well, they dont' any more, one thing i used to do was to send things to work with daddy, then he could toss there, also really important things, take a picture of them with their special project. That way you have a picture of the child and the project. This is, of course, from a mom who still has some projects up in the attic. I think an egyptian house, and we actually use a mosiac that Julia made in 7th grade as a trivet.