You know how whenever your kiddos settle in to color, they constantly find dried marker, after dried marker, after dried marker? Ugh. The worst! If I had a dollar for every time I heard one of my children say, “Mommy, the orange is dried out!” I swear I would have a whole bunch of dollars, haha!
Well, I decided that it was about time to go through all of the markers and figure out what was dried and what still works. However, I really didn’t want to sit down and do it myself. So…I made it an activity! Shhhh…don’t tell my kids!
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Materials
Here is what you need to get started:
How To
Lay out that paper (I use a large paper roll and cut off what I need) and then draw a whole bunch of small squares on it. You could just leave the paper blank and let your kiddos color, but I chose to add the squares so I was sure they were coloring in a large enough area to thoroughly test each marker.
Once your squares are drawn, set out the markers to be tested. Be sure you have somewhere to put them after they are tested. You will want a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ pile. You can use a bag or an art tray for this. I put the good markers on a tray and the bad markers in a bag labeled ‘bad’ with a frowny face. The visual helped my 3 year old!
Now, let your littles have at those markers and take a moment to relax.
Why Test Your Markers?
My littles love to do anything art related. Coloring, painting, creating…they love it all! Often, I will find my 6 year old camped out in the dining room with a supply caddy full of markers and some blank paper. He could create for hours!
With all of that creating comes the inevitable uncapped or partially capped marker. It is just impossible to avoid with three littles who can draw!
And there is nothing worse than a child who wants to do a quiet, independent activity, but can’t because the markers are dried out! So, do yourself a favor and set this activity up pronto!
Now that you have nice, non-dried out markers, what shall you do with them?! Give this one a try!
Thanks so much for reading, sweet friend! As always, you can find us over on Pinterest and see what we are up to on Instagram.
