On the first (or second, I can't quite remember) day of school, Lee brought home an orange folder with his name on it in his bookbag. The is the primary method of communicating with the teacher. The concept is sort of like sending notes by carrier pigeon back in the olden days. School newsletters, forms, menus, announcements, notes from the teacher, the work your child did that day, are all placed in this folder in the bookbag on a daily basis. Conversely, I can send notes to the teacher, money for Lee to purchase items from bake sales, and return forms by putting them in the folder. The teacher empties the folder each day and routes the contents to the appropriate place in the school or reads the note and acts on it. It's quite an efficient system as long as the folder is emptied and returned each day by both parties, parents and teachers.
For the most part, I've been returning the folder daily, although there has been one or two days that it's remained on the dining room table. What I did not do was to figure out a way to store all of the stuff that comes home in the folder, so it was accumulating into yet another pile of stuff to figure out what to do with. I'm a pack rat and information junkie so it's hard to just throw things away. This past weekend I finally got a large 3 ring binder and a pack of dividers with the months of the year tabs and set about filing everything away. This was so simple. Why didn't I think of it before?
I now have a chronological record of all of the orange folder communication. Lee's coloring pages and artwork that are not displayed are currently in the pockets of the binder. This is only a temporary solution because at the rate that he's been bringing them home, those pockets will be filled by the end of November so I'll have to think of another solution for them soon. Perhaps they'll just get their own orange folder.
Do you have a storage solution for your child's artwork that you would like to share? Please leave a comment with it below.
