Kids love to color on the walls. When my kids were small, I spent some time, as all parents have, scrubbing crayon or marker off the walls. I couldn’t believe my little angel would do such a thing, but it happens to the best of us.
So in the spirit of family fun, I offer some solutions to actually let your children color on the walls. But first, a story.
When I was fourteen, my mom decided to wallpaper the huge wall adjacent to the staircase of our 1970s split-level home. She asked me if I wanted to draw on the wall before she wallpapered over it. She might as well have asked me if I wanted to walk on the moon. I grew up in a home where we weren’t allowed to walk on the front lawn, put anything except food on the end of a fork into our mouth, or put our feet up on the coffee table. We weren’t allowed to touch the walls as we went up the stairs, let along draw on them.
Apparently Mom decided I had been repressed long enough and wanted to let me cut loose. So I did. I used markers, crayons, you name it, and drew a virtual graffiti mural on the gigantic wall. It was glorious.
Of course the universe always comes back to bite you. Her wallpaper, which was due in at the store the next day was suddenly backordered. For a month. My mom had to live with the evidence of her impetuous decision on proud display. There was no hiding it because it was the first thing you saw when you opened the front door. She had some explaining to do when the ladies from church visited. No one was ever so glad to see wallpaper as my mother when it finally came in.
Here are some less risky, and less permanent, ways to let your kids have their fun by drawing on the walls.
1. Paint a wall of their room with chalkboard paint and supply them with lots of chalk. My friends have this in their kids’ rooms and it’s great fun.
2. Tape butcher paper to a convenient spot on the wall. Provide crayons to color with. Markers could leak through to the wall.
3. Mount large white boards on the wall where your kids have easy access to them.
4. Use magnetic paint and provide magnetic mosaic pieces for your kids to make pictures. It’s not exactly drawing, but it satisfies the same urge.