My son does extremely well academically at school, but he certainly follows his mother when it comes to creativity as art is the one area that he really struggles with. He does have a large art box at home with a vast array of pens, crayons and colouring pencils etc but for art homework we tend to stick to colouring pencils as he tends to go a bit mad with felt tip pens and I have found he can control a coloured pencil better than a felt tip pen.

As he uses them more for homework than anything else, I decided to get him a good set of colouring pencils so his work would look better and I purchased him a set of Crayola colouring pencils from our local WH Smith as I believe Crayola are probably the best quality pencils on the market for children.

You can purchase these pencils in packs of 12, 24 and 36. I went for the 24 pencils just because I thought it would give us more choice of colours and I thought 36 pencils would be unnecessary as my son isn't really into art and doesn't use them unless he has to.

The pencils come in a yellow coloured box with the Crayola logo across the front. The pack is appealing to children as it is bright and colourful. Within the pack you get 24 different coloured pencils and this pack is perfect in my opinion as it contains every colour that my son could need to do his drawing and colouring. There are red, yellow, white, black, brown, orange, pink, purple and a few different shades of greens and blues so there really is every colour you could need here.

A pack of these pencils isn't cheap but they are well worth it in my opinion. I brought these pencils for my son just before Christmas and they are still perfect even now. The leads are really strong in them and don't break when a little force is applied to them (which is great as my son is quite heavy handed when it comes to colouring) and when they do need sharpening, they sharpen well and you don't get the problem of the lead snapping mid-sharpening and you having to do it again which wastes more lead.

The colours themselves are nice and bright too. They aren't dull and you don't need to apply much force to the pencil for the colour to show quite vibrantly on the paper. The pencils are easy to control too which makes my sons work look far neater and tidier than if he was using a crayon or felt tip pen.

As these are Crayola and they are from W H Smiths, these were never going to be cheap. A pack of 24 pencils costs around £4.50 which isn't cheap for a pack of colouring pencils, but they will last you forever as although my son isn't overly artistic, he does have some art homework most weeks and therefore the pencils are used on a weekly basis and still look as good as new and have over ¾ of the lead remaining.

Overall, these are really good quality colouring pens and they come with a recommendation from me. There is a good mix of colours, they colour well, have strong leads and are well priced in my opinion. These are great colouring pencils and I would recommend them to all.