Coloring Wall

For my little guy's birthday I made a sports-themed coloring wall. He loved it and colored on it for weeks, so now I want to make one for each holiday, or special occasion, until one of us is bored of it.

Materials Needed: crayons, large roll of paper, Sharpie, pencil, and blue painters tape.

Directions:
It is really simple. I just bought a big roll of paper at Staples, then I drew lots of pictures on it with a Sharpie (after did a draft in pencil), and then used painter's tape to stick it to the wall (and the floor).

For the ball theme, I just traced different sized bowls and then added details to distinguish between the balls. The baseball gloves and footballs were a little trickier.

We always keep crayons in a bowl close by so that my little guy can color whenever he wants.

We also made a coloring wall for St. Patrick's Day. I traced shamrock cut outs and then copied our Leprechaun puppet. I also drew a rainbow, pot of gold, and wrote the words, "Happy St. Patrick's Day!" because my son likes to color letters.

We're going to make another one that is spring themed next week!

Focusing on topics that are seasonal or related to things your kids love can help foster conversation. I like to include pictures that represent new vocabulary words we want to learn... coloring together and talking about the new words is a lot more fun than doing flashcards or only looking at pictures in books. Finding a book on a topic first and reading it together can then give you inspiration for your coloring wall. Wouldn't it be fun to do a coloring wall themed around your child's favorite book? You could break the wall into segments and tell the story like a little comic strip. As your child colors the pictures in sequence... they can practice retelling the story!

Younger kids will need you to draw pictures for them, but older kids can draw their own coloring wall mural and then invite their friends over to color it in with them.