Coloring Without Boundries

I recently read a book by Rahima Baldwin Dancy called You Are Your Child's First Teacher, she wrote a section on using coloring block crayons verses typical stick crayons. This is where my interest in block crayons arose. Dancy also mentioned in this same section that all children have artist abilities, those abilities just need to be continuously nurtured. By doing simple things such as trading our children's coloring markers for water colors and offering blank sheets of drawing paper instead of pre-lined coloring pages (where our children are requested to "keep within the lines") then their artistic ability is more likely to remain alive and accessible to them throughout their whole lives. This all made sense to me and I have begun to make small changes in my thinking and in the ways that I not only present crafts to Vada but to my older girls as well.

 Coloring with block crayons rather than using stick crayons enables a person/child to cover an entire page with color with very little effort making coloring easier and more fluid-like especially for smaller children. 

Stockmar Wax block crayons are made of a sweet smelling beeswax rather than paraffin and can be purchased at many stores but can easily be found through amazon.

For Christmas Vada also received these fun Alex brand Finger Crayons. While the colors are not as vivid as the beeswax block crayons are, they still serve a purpose beyond just coloring!

 Finger crayons are great for finger isolation, which is something that we are really working on with Vada.
On a daily basis I have Vada in her thumb splints, well... almost and depending on what I am doing with her I may take them off (but that's besides the point). Long story short, the splints are suppose to help her hold her thumbs correctly so that she has a "correct" pincer grasp. These crayons don't help the placement of her thumb necessarily but they do help Vada hold her pointer in an outward position while at they same time having her thumb also in an outward position, kind of like a pincer grasp. Either way, the finger crayons, helps Vada use her hand muscles differently than she is used to, which is good for her...

Finger Crayons are also good for stacking,

color sorting and...

knocking over.