Bold Drawing with a Toddler

Tess loves to draw!  This is fun and I like encouraging her, but as I learned with Josephine, regular old crayons can be frustrating for a two year old.  Frustrating to draw with, anyway.  They can be lovely to chew.  The problem for my two year old with using crayons to draw is that she has to push pretty hard to make a satisfying mark and sometimes the pushing breaks the crayon. Overall it can be unsatisfying.  From reading other's suggestions I discovered Crayola Twistables Slick Stix, which make a great bold mark on paper without pushing hard.  They can be messy though! They evidently feel really nice when you push them over a hardwood floor or a painted wall!  They will wash off those surfaces if you get to them quickly.

Another art tool that makes a nice mark are oil pastels.  I bought the girls some Crayola oil pastels a while back but often forget about them.  I'm going to have to take them out though!  This weekend we visited my mom and Tess discovered her oil pastels and loved drawing with them. She needed our supervision with these since they should not be tasted and may not wash up as well as the Crayola products but she really enjoyed using them.