Crayon Fun!

Erica decided on a crayon-themed birthday party. Why?


Last weekend [the final weekend of February], Andrew was away with guy friends. SOOO, I decided to hang out with my 'rents for the weekend. Yes, I crashed their house and mooched off of their generosity. What can I say... :-)

On Sunday, we decided to have a fun trip to Easton... to visit the Crayola Factory! I bet you never heard of it before, huh? Yeah for living in Pennsylvania!!!


Its amazing, really great for kids to enjoy. Its not just some run-of-the-mill museum. Sure, there are exhibits and timelines of Crayola's beginnings. But there are so many hands-on activities. There's no way I can include ALL of the pictures from the trip. But I'll try to add a few. [Okay, more than a few!]

I'll try to explain some of the pictures. For example, to the left <---- there is a picture of Erica 'dancing.' They have a room that transfers your movements into a kaleidescope of fun colors. We were fortunate that the place wasn't very full that Sunday, so we had a chance to get Erica's picture w/o other kids in the room as well.



She enjoyed painting a treasure map. We dipped a roller into green paint and then brushed it across a map-template. Then we pressed a piece of paper over top [as you can see my mother doing] and the picture transfers.

Erica also LOVED LOVED LOVED making a puppet. She gave him a crown, arms, and legs. I drew the face for her. She was very proud of her king.

There were lots of other things then. They had window/walls that the kids could draw on with marker. She liked the chance to actually draw on the wall. Sorry, I'm not sharing the picture of that. There was another craft that she wasn't quite good at. Then we looked into CRAZY mirrors. Definitely not sharing pictures of that... though I did like the ones that made me look skinnier. Ha ha!




There was a play area for younger kids. It was nice for in-between times. She has a very short attention span, and in addition she's extremely active! So in between some of the crafts, she went to the play area to run around.

One activity involved melted wax. ...I'm having trouble thinking of words to describe it, so look at the picture to the left. <---- There were many different colors of melted wax. They had papers to design and would stick que-tips into the wax to use as a paint brush. That was neat.



Then we used modeling clay which you could shape and color with markers. Not easy at all! We're so used to play-doh which is soft.... This stuff was really hard to roll out and shape. Plus, she got marker on her shirt AND IT DIDN'T COME OUT IN THE WASH! I'm not happy about that at all.

I forgot to mention the sidewalk chalk. There's a nice big area to draw with chalk. Erica walked right past it though. I'm not quite sure why, b/c she loves the stuff. Maybe its "familiar" and she wanted to move onto new things.


We watched a crayon-making demonstration. That was fascinating. The guy gave each kid a crayon and a wrapper to try and wrap themselves. Erica's turned out rather well.

There's a HUGE giftstore there [big surprise, huh?]. The entrance has a wall with all of their colors shown. That's the picture to the right ---> with my parents and Erica. The store was great! There are so many more options than you'd find at Walmart or KMart or wherever you shop.


I picked up a Birthday present for her. She hasn't seen it yet; its a surprise. But my parents bought her a shirt and let her pick out a crayon buddy. She picked a yellow crayon. She has now named him "Cranny." She really loves that thing. She wants to take him everywhere!

There was lots else, but its 1 AM and I still have so much to do for Erica's birthday party!!! Eek! Its tomorrow. [Actually, that's today!!! Its Saturday now!]