My twin 3 year olds are very into anything arts and crafts related. And sometimes I don’t have any patience left in my body for some elaborate creative mess. We have been lucky enough to find some great mess-free ways to get creative so that there’s always a good time for art.
Crayola Color Wonder Line – specifically these kits that you can find on Amazon or at target. It’s a marker that only writes on a specific kind of paper. We also love the travel friendly notebooks that can easily fit in a lap while strapped into the car seat or a diaper bag.
Aqua Doodle Mat – this is a cool design, it’s a mat with markers that you fill with water. You can color on the mat and it shows up like magic and then fades a few minutes later.
Magna-doodles! – any brand is fine, we use these daily. The girls usually draw silly faces on them exclusively. They like to experiment with other magnets from the fridge as well.
Melissa & Doug reusable sticker sets – these are cool but not entirely mess-free, I keep the stickers in ziplock bags and half the time I find a spare sticker or two hiding under the couch or in a book. But these are way better than scraping regular stickers off of my windows.
I recently made a cabinet available in the kitchen for *most* of their art supplies. I’ve got these pencil boxes with markers/crayons/color wonder markers and their corresponding books. They’ve gotten great at tearing a page out of their coloring book and opening the pencil box on their own. But they also know to ask permission first.
Either way I embrace the mess, but I’m happy to have some mess-free options!
-Eva
Domestic Musings 