[Ad- gifted products] When it comes to crafts, the kids tend to colour and draw each and every week they are here. Often the paints get dragged out and markers find their way downstairs. It’s always good to see them interacting with things that are not just the Xbox or Nintendo Switch. When Office Monsters were offering some arts and crafts supplies to try out, we jumped at the idea, looking at what the kids would like to try and what colouring books they had.
Travel Colouring Books
The kids often find themselves in the car, going from place to place and onto some of our adventures. Traveling to various places for days out or just shopping trips can be tricky, as the kids aren’t very use to being in a car. They often start annoying each other or are just bored in the backseat. When browsing the website, I saw a pretty clever idea. Office Monsters have Tallon Children’s Travel Colouring Set – which comes with three copies of two different colouring books. The first three were mermaid and under the sea themed, while the other three were jungle and animal themed.
These are basically cardboard, fold out books that contain a pocket for a bunch of provided colour pencils and then two different flip-up notebooks full of pictures to color. The entire thing is then folded back together and held closed with an elastic band. The children were first given their colouring book in the house, so they could check them out before taking them in the car. Since then, we’ve gone on a few hour long car rides and they’ve quite enjoyed colouring in instead of annoying each other. This is a huge bonus as it has made car travel much nicer. Sometimes, it is a bit hard to get the pencils back in – especially for the youngest, Robin, who is three – as there is a card lip on the inside of the pocket that the pencils get stuck on.
A 4D Colouring Book
When it comes to Kai, he really, really loves technology. When it comes to him doing crafts, it’s normally re-creating things from Minecraft or using Lego, like in the Xbox Lego games he plays. So, when I saw the 4D colouring book selection on Office Monster’s site, I figured this would be perfect for Kai. We got a Pukka Fun Interactive Colouring Book 4D: Outer Space, which has a bunch of different pages to color as well as maze puzzles, games and facts. The colouring book comes with a free companion app, that you can then scan pages of the book into, so that they become mobile interactions.
Basically, if you download the app, you can scan in each of the pages with a scanning symbol. These pages come to life, showcasing astronauts going into rockets, flying around planets and exploring. You can click on the app to make the rocket go faster and move the tablet around to view the pages from different perspectives. When using the app, the colours that you used in the colouring book do come up – showing everything as hand drawn, but you can switch to a more realistic look. The app also allows you to record, take pictures, and provides instructions on what you can do with each page once you have uploaded the page.
This was a hit with the kids, who really enjoyed watching their colouring come to live through the colouring book. As we have a few tablets hanging around, it was super easy to set up, and they are even able to upload the pages themselves and play along with it. Kai keeps talking about how he made his own video game, which is a huge bonus from the boy who is not quite sold on arts.
The only downside to the 4D colouring books is the fact that you need a tech savy parent to explain the book to you tech savy child. Once you have explained that it becomes an interactive game on the tablet, and the child starts to take an interest, you can really sell them on a few hours of colouring and then watching it come to life. If you don’t have a table though, it’s just a colouring book.
Pack of coloured pens
Along with these different colouring books, Office Monster sent over a bucket of Bic Kids Visa Felt Pens, which were used to colour in Kai’s book and to do general drawings. The great thing about this pack of pens is that it comes in a pen holder that can be placed on a table and it comes with two of each colour. This means there was no arguing over the same colour and that if a colour drys out, we have another one. It’s a nice little set.
Over all, these products just scratch the surface of what the company has to offer. They have a lot more office supplies, arts supplies and even a bunch of storage devices that can be purchased. Office Monster stocks a large variety of brands, so if you’re looking for something office or art related, you can probably find them there.