Well first off, a thank you to Steph for allowing me to be a guest blogger for her! I was very excited when she offered me the opportunity to review products for children, considering I currently have a two and a half year old who is a bit spoiled so it works out great. Yesterday, my daughter received her monthly Citrus Lane box and this was included. This is the Melissa & Doug Paint with Water book with paintbrush. I immediately got excited seeing this because my daughter loves to paint, but she doesn’t understand the water going to the paint and then to the paper, without it ending up in her mouth; or all the colors mixing together turning a beautiful blue into an “overcooked” black! So I thought this would be great! She would just take water and brush the paper and colors would appear! Kind of like a paint-by-numbers, or so I thought!
Okay so I was very wrong on that. It’s a unique thing, the paints are attached to the coloring pages and dried to paper. It quickly became a frustrating moment to watch! My daughter would get her brush wet, rub the paint, then try to color and nothing happened! I realized it took quite a lot of water to get the paint wet enough for the brush (Also during this time while trying to get her paints wet she was getting frustrated I was using her brush for her), then even faster than it took to get the paint wet, it would dry too soon! After 15 minutes or so, she moved on to another toy she’d gotten that day and left me with the painting.
I tested it out, and I ended up coloring the page you see in the top picture. I had to use all the paint from my page, plus my daughter’s page to fill my entire coloring page up. As you can see below, the right picture is the one she tried to color and gave up on, and mine is on the left. I ran out of blue for the sky. Perhaps I was a bit too eager to use blue on everything, but I think if they’re going to give this to children who want to use their imagination, they should be prepared for a kid to want a big blue sky with a big blue flower and a big blue butterfly!
If I were to grade this on 0-5 Stars, I’d have to give it two stars. My daughter isn’t interested in it any longer, and I’m sure if I get bored I could paint with it but I think the best part about this product is the cute pictures, nothing else!
