Where do you keep markers and crayons?

Ainsley and Bea love to draw and color. They have a little kid-sized table in our living/dining area with a basket of markers and crayons. However, Caleb is ALWAYS into them. Right now he looks like he ate a smurf, as he got a hold of a blue marker and bit the tip off of it. I don't know where to keep them so the supplies are easily accessible to A&B, but also out of C's reach. If I put them in some sort of box he can't open, he will still go up and grab them when A&B are using them. This is SO annoying and is the bane of my existence right now. I feel like it would be a little unfair to limit their coloring/drawing to only when Caleb is napping, they seriously love it and would be pretty upset about that.

 

LOL, we don't have a younger baby and mine are still all up at the top of the closet (which probably explains our inability to draw/write at age level). The household Sharpie collection has been on lockdown for 3.5 years now.

Can you put it in a bin with a clasp (like those lock & lock containers) that would be too hard for him to open and then keep that bin on a shelf out of (relative) reach for him, but still handy for the girls (maybe in their room)?

 

our are in a plastic container with locking sides in their toy box. this way they can see them but our 15 mo old can't get into them.

 

Nadia has most of her supplies in her room, and she colors with the door closed. K&K are never allowed in there. She also has a little table in the office with an old computer, and some crayons/art supplies there, too. But that room is gated off, and again, off-limits to Kevan & Karina.

K&K do color, but always at the kitchen table, supervised by me. They're not allowed to get up and go anywhere with crayons. I have them in a shoebox, which goes back on a high shelf in the closet when they're done.

At some point, I guess I need to stop thinking of them as my babies -- for pete's sake, they'll be 3 in June. But neither is as mature as Nadia was at this age, and they still get into heaps of trouble!

 

I keep them in an old diaper wipes container. For all of the things my kids have figured out, that diaper wipe container is something that puzzles them. When they are not drawing, I put the container on a shelf out of reach. Don't want them to figure it out anytime soon!

 

I found a plastic container that they can open but Caleb can't. When he's out and about, they are just going to have to sit at the dining room table and color. I really can't take the "Caleb took my crayon! He ripped my drawing!" anymore. :blink:

 

We use Chinese food takeout containers, they're harder to open up than the Glad containers. I need to figure out a place similar to put my crochet hooks though.

 

I allow them to draw at the big table - the dining room table. Now that T is bigger he joins them, but it worked for a long time before he learned to climb up there.

 

Are they tall enough to step over baby gates or agile enough to open them? Maybe you could designate some gated-off part of your house as the "big kids' art zone"? I can imagine the challenge -- Amy & Sarah would go berzerk if they didn't have free access to the art supplies. That's how they occupy just about every spare minute of the day.