Melissa & Doug Scratch Art - Best travel toys for 5 year olds
Always something to do for the holidays or rainy day?
Play Choice now has the ultimate activity book collection, with over 60 pages of fun coloring pages and educational puzzles.
The easiest thing if you want to get them drawing without making a mess is to have them scratch instead of draw.
Scratch art is a unique time activity for children without the chance that they will stain a chair.
This scratch art by Melissa & Doug is a bit more extensive, making it really suitable for toddlers, but there are also smaller cards for younger children.
- Can they be focused on it for hours
- Without colors, it doesn't make a mess
- Once scratched it's gone
With the stylus they can scratch the cards nicely and watch the rainbow colors appear underneath.
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What we discuss in this comprehensive post:
Perfect toy for airplane travel
A perfect travel toy for pre-schoolers on airplanes that will hardly take up space in your bag!
I'm not the only one who's had a lot of positive experiences playing with it. For example, Pedro Cordeiro from Spain said “a great book for a child to distract himself in the restaurant.”
You can in a restaurant this toy, of course, just as well as on the plane.
Another reviewer on the same site said, “My three and a half year old daughter loved it. She spent all morning scratching with the stick, revealing colours, drawing lines, tracing… I could concentrate on other things while she calmly practiced her fine motor skills next to me.
Both my own experiences and those of others show that it's great play material to let them play independently.
Our experience
My 5 year old and I thoroughly enjoyed the Melissa & Doug Scratch Art book with the PAW Patrol theme. Its compact size and portability make it ideal for taking anywhere.
Still, it's not completely free of mess as it leaves a lot of the scratched off material from the book on your table. I therefore recommend using it on a smooth surface so that you can easily wipe everything off again.
If you take it with you on the plane, take a damp cloth with you so that you can easily wipe everything off the folding table.
Amount of playing time
My son takes about 25 minutes to complete 1 page, although he occasionally went back and forth to other pages to do some scratching there as well. But with 10 pages in a booklet, that's good for 250 minutes total playing time, or 4 hours.
Of course they won't do that in one session, playing alone for 20 minutes was the maximum for us. When I also started playing along, for example by asking questions or making suggestions to do something with the supplied template, I could stretch that to 35 minutes of continuous playing time.
The supplied template is also a nice addition that offers something extra. You can put these over the pages and then, for example, scratch off a flower or heart. Nice to add some extra things around the characters in the book.
The mix of dots-to-dots and template techniques on every page kept him engaged and excited.
Material from Melissa & Doug
The booklet is made of sturdy cardboard and a nice addition is the wooden pen that comes with it. This shows yet again how Melissa & Doug thinks about the environment, because most scratch books are just plastic.
Melissa & Doug is a wooden toy brand founded in 1988 in Connecticut, America. They look at the versatility of toys with the sturdy timelessness that wood offers.
Still, I found the wooden pen a bit more difficult to scratch quickly with than with a plastic pen with a defined sharp point. It was even something we talked about while playing.
Another good addition to some other scratch art books is that the entire background can be scratched off, while you still see the figures. I remember a booklet with dinosaurs where the background and the dinosaur were all the same kind of glittery green, so when you scratch everything off you don't see the dinosaur at all.
Learning goals
The book is a great way to develop motor skills and have fun at the same time. Plus, PAW Patrol always holds a special place in preschoolers' hearts because of the great combination of teamwork, adventure, and humor it offers.
Best travel toy for 5 year olds
The easiest thing if you want to get them drawing without making a mess is to have them scratch instead of draw.
Conclusion
The Melissa & Doug scratch art book is a great addition to your child's creative drawing arsenal and a fun way for them to practice their fine motor skills.
Always something to do for the holidays or rainy day?
Play Choice now has the ultimate activity book collection, with over 60 pages of fun coloring pages and educational puzzles.
Joost Nusselder, the founder of Speelkeuze.nl is a content marketer, father and loves trying out new toys. As a child he came into contact with everything related to games when his mother started the Tinnen Soldaat in Ede. Now he and his team create helpful blog articles to help loyal readers with fun play ideas.
