The best art supplies for little kids

Thanks to those of you who emailed me asking for recommendations for great art supplies for kids, after last week’s kid-focused blog post.

I’m no expert, but I do have a child and I do love supporting her artistic leanings, so here’s a few things that so far, have been a hit! Disclaimer, she’s only 5.

So here we go, art supplies for kids, for home or away:

Little Brian paint sticks are something we’ve had for years. They are so good for little ones, easy to grip, an exciting range of colours and no paint spilling everywhere.

As an aside, for really littles ones travelling, we loved those water painting books. You can get them everywhere and they’re magic on long plane or train journeys.

My daughter never really loved crayons or pencils as the colours weren’t strong enough for her rainbow making, so we ended up going for Oil Pastels, which are easy to grip and have a little more oomf to them (plus a bit more mess).

Needless to say for my extremely clean-conscious husband, a big art mat was a must. Here’s the one we had, along with a little wipeable apron, though an old, adult t shirt also works just fine.

We carry a LCD drawing board, a sketch book and gel pens everywhere. The sketch pads from Flying Tiger are totally fine and you can get good gel pen sets from Smiths or Amazon. For the car, a drawing board is a must, but get one with an attached ‘pen’ and a simple delete screen button, not one which needs multiple pens and to be wiped!

For home, a good easel roll is a bit more exciting and means that multiple children can draw or paint at the same time.

Air Dry Clay is also an absolute winner in our household for anything 3D.

Other things that get my daughter excited: blue tack, pritt stick, scissors, pipe cleaners, washi tape and feathers so I’d recommend you fill an old shoe box with these bits and let them go wild (on said art mat!).

To note: these aren't affiliate links, just things that either we have or are similar to what we've used.

If you have any great reccos, pls do send them over to me Thursday.arts.club@gmail.com

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