6 Activities To Keep your Kids Creative this Summer Holiday
Kids love colouring. Everyone knows that. And our crayons are great for kids. But what do you do when halfway through the summer holiday, they complain they’ve coloured every page in their colouring book or decide that simply drawing on plain paper isn’t enough? (Apart from buy another colouring book!) These colouring activities will keep your little artists entertained for hours and teach them to get creative with the way they make art.
1. Save your Shavings
Unlike regular wax crayons, our crayons can be sharpened just like colouring pencils. But don’t let your shavings go to waste! Because our crayons are made almost entirely from clay and pigment, the shavings work just as well as the crayons too. You can collect each colour separately or shave a few colours directly onto the paper and have fun blending them. Your children will love getting creative this way and seeing how the colours blend together. Think: finger painting but with WAY less cleanup afterwards. And since our formula is water soluble, your budding Picassos will have no trouble washing their hands once they’re done.
2. Imprint Shading
This might be one that you tried when you were little. The concept is very simple, but the result is ultimately very satisfying for artists of any age. All you have to do is find something with an interesting texture, a coin for example, put your paper over the top, and gently shade over it with a Bambino crayon. Your child will love watching the coin appear on the page almost like magic. It doesn’t have to just be coins either; go on a leaf hunt outside to get all sorts of beautiful patterns from nature or let your child explore and experiment with whatever textures they can find with objects around the house.
3. Just Add Water
You might not know this, but unlike wax crayons, our clay formula is water soluble. This is what makes it washable. But it also means that you can use water alongside our crayons to get a range of different effects. You can dip the crayons straight into water to get a lighter effect, similar to watercolour paint. You can use a brush (or your fingers) to paint a thin layer of water over your colouring to blend colours, or you can even experiment with a spray bottle to get a mottled dotty effect.
4. Colour by Sums
I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of colouring pages across the internet (including #BambinoChallenge in our Facebook group every week!). While these are a great way to colour, some children may prefer a little more challenge to their colouring. Colour by sums is a great way to challenge your child and have them be more satisfied with the finished product. It’s basically colour by numbers, but to find the right number for the colour key, you have to work out the answer to a mathematical problem. This hits two birds with one stone – creativity and education. You can find colour by maths pages to download here.
5. Make a Colour Wheel
A colour wheel is a fabulous craft that can be used to introduce children to the science of colours. This video tutorial by Raising Small Readers shows you how to make a colour wheel with your child and is a simple but creative
6. Find the Colour
This one is a simple game that can keep your kids occupied for hours without you having put in that much effort at all! (A little lazy sounding? Perhaps. But you know keeping kids occupied and entertained each day whilst managing the rest of your life is nothing short of an Olympic task.) The concept is simple: you pick a crayon from the Bambino set, and your kid(s) have to race against each other or the clock to find something around the house that matches the colour. That’s it! Bonus tip: if you loudly countdown the first and last few seconds of the timer, your child will not be able to resist the exhilaration of thinking they’re just going to make it in time. Even if you haven’t really been timing them at all.
