For the past few months, I’ve been in the process of re-decorating Elle’s room. I want to make a place for her growing book collection as well as create some meaningful art to display in her room.
One of the things I really want to display is her new skill of writing her name. Personalized name art is an easy way to capture this piece of Elle’s childhood and preserve it.
I know children writing their name is such a simple thing but for me it’s a big milestone. It was only the other day I witnessed my girl write her name all by herself for the first time!
We were at a community event and stopped at a booth where kids can paint their own frisbees. The girl operating the booth gave Elle (almost 4 years old) a white frisbee along with a black sharpie and told her to write her name on the back.
Elle’s been learning to write since starting her first year of preschool last September. It’s been really interesting to see her progress.
At the beginning of the school year, her teachers taught her to trace her name written in dotted lines. Her tracing was everywhere and the letters had a life of their own! Then a couple months later her tracing got tighter and neater. Then she was writing straight lines and later her tracing was right on the dots. Up until a few weeks ago, she was able to write her name if she sees a sample of it.
So you could imagine my surprise when I saw her take the Sharpie from the girl and began writing her name. E-l-l-e she wrote, with the 4 letters filling up the width of the frisbee.
I was so proud of my girl! I cheered and we high fived. I commended her for her diligence which lead her to her accomplishment.
And so as I’m decorating her room and filling up a bunch of empty picture frames with meaning art, I want to frame her name written by her at age 3.8.
To create this, I got a piece of scrapbook paper that matches her room (pink of course), cut it to the size of the frame and got her to write her name on the paper. Before putting the paper into the frame, I put a date on the back along with her age.
This little 4×6 frame will now be displayed alongside photos of her as well as other artworks she created, like the Mondrian inspired painting from a Kiwi Crate craft kit we did a year ago.
With this artwork, I want to always remember how proud I am of her, because sometimes I forget. I also want Elle to remember that working with a spirit of excellence, persistence and diligence always pay off.
If you have a lot of art your children made that you want to keep but don’t have physical space for, a space saving technique is to scan it and create a photo book of the artwork. I’ve been creating meaning photo books with Blurb and this one will add to our collection.