With two children at Sts. Peter, Paul and Michael and a third at North Junior High School, the owner of Creative Escapes, a scrapbooking day retreat, said she just can't keep every math worksheet and art project that comes home inside her kids' backpacks.

"If you keep too much then it just becomes junk," she said. "You have to weed it down and find out what's really important to that child that year."

Parents throughout Central Minnesota will face the same task as school comes to a close this month, but local experts have suggestions for reducing the clutter and saving only the best.

Quality

Kennedy Elementary School Principal Diane Moeller urges parents to get their kids involved in the decision-making process.

Moeller said she remembers going through school work with her own kids. As they chose pieces to save she'd ask them why the work was especially important. That answer, she said, she wrote in a note and attached it to the work. Once her kids were done choosing their favorites, she added a few of her own.

When it comes to writing samples, Moeller encourages parents to look for pieces that contain the child's true voice.

"Those are typically the pieces that touch your heart," she said.

In addition, she said, parents should look for pieces that show changes in their children's writing skills so when they're looking back they can see how much they've learned.

Keepsakes

Kit Ferber, sales associate at Scrapbooks Plus, looks through her children's work to find pieces of writing or art that reflect them at the time.

She saved an essay her daughter wrote about Kirby Puckett the year she was really into the baseball player.

"You want to capture a moment out of that year," Ferber said.

As she chooses items for the keepsake box with the help of her kids, Ferber dates everything.

If an art project is too big, she shrinks it on a copy machine so it will eventually fit inside a scrapbook.

Ferber also saves any notes written about her kids by teachers, tickets from their concerts and programs from events and activities they were involved with. In addition, she saves photos of her kids at school plays, sporting events, concerts and competitions.

Each year she encourages her kids to take a camera to school to capture any special events or field trips as well as the first and last day of school.

"You don't get the spontaneity in a class picture, you get it when you take those snapshots of the kids goofing around," she said.

Mementos

Lee saves many of the same things, and she hangs onto her kids' report cards and the pictures they have of their friends.

Any special recognitions for spelling bees, Academic Triathlon or other competitions also make it into the box.

Although Lee expects to fill each child's box with their kindergarten through 12th-grade school work, she also saves each child's yearbook and any journals they've worked on.

"It kind of tells the story of what they've done through the year," Lee said.