So our little 16 month old girl is obsessed with crayons, pen, markers, pencils, basically anything that writes. It’s a lot of fun watching her discover doodling, but there is the constant threat of her using those markers and crayons somewhere that is not the notepad we gave her. Whenever she is using crayons in particular, he seems to get inspired to try coloring the furniture, and we managed to deflect that so that she is never successful, but it requires real close monitoring. That wouldn’t be an issue, if it were something that she does only sometimes, but she likes to draw at least 5 times a day, and sometimes she can do it for long periods of time, which would give us the perfect chance to do the dishes or prepare her some food if we didn’t have to watch her so closely.
Well, while looking for an alternative, I found this water doodle mat, which was really affordable and that seemed almost too good to be true, but was, as a matter of fact, just perfect for what we needed.
The Water Painting Doodle Mat by Wayear International (yeah, not a very catchy name) allows the kids to draw using nothing but a pen filled with tap water. It is made of a material that absorbs enough of the water to look like real drawings, but without smudges or leaks, similar to the much more expensive AquaDoodles.
This pad is large enough at almost 20 by 20 inches, that she can draw for a long time before it is filled and can move around the pad instead of having to stay still in one position. It has 4 background colors, which give the impression that she is coloring with markers, and it dries super quickly (within minutes), which means that she can keep coloring if she wishes to do so. It has the outline of letters of the alphabet to be traced on the Mad itself and comes with drawing tips for very little kids as well as an assortment of foam shapes to trace or use as stamps.
The fact that there are no messes, and that all she needs is the included water per, which refills from with tap water is also a huge bonus, added to the fact that I don’t have to worry if she draws on herself, the walls or puts it in her mouth.
We have had it for several weeks and use it daily. Best of all, prices vary from $5 to $15.
A definite Happy Baby Rating.
