When my son got to about 14 months old I felt that he would benefit from a bit more creative play and decided to find a few arts and crafts type bits for him to play with. I was wary that he still had a tendency to put things in his mouth so was unsure about buying him crayons in case they got bitten and chewed. I came across these Mini Artist first crayons in The Early Learning Centre and thought they were a lovely idea, so I purchased these together with the rubbing plates to use them on.

The crayons come in a box of six for £6, although I bought these in one of their sales do got a box for £4.80. The crayons are suitable for ages 18 months plus but I was intending to use with close supervision anyway so I was happy for my son to have them at a slightly younger age. The crayons come with a plastic 'easy grip' handle, making them really chunky and suitable to fit neatly into little hands. On top of the plastic handles, the crayons sit neatly in a pyramid-dome shape. The six colours contained are black, blue, green, yellow, red and pink.

The crayons works as any crayon - by rubbing them on the paper. These work really well with the rubbing plates as they are bigger than normal crayons and can be grasped rather than held like a pen so even younger babies that are yet to develop a pincer-type grip can use them. They also have a larger surface area in contact with the paper at any one time so 'rubbing' on the plates produces results a lot quicker than with a traditional type crayon.

My son soon got the hang of these and enjoyed removing them from the box and putting them back before he actually wanted to use them - this served to introduce them to him nicely. He soon learned how to use these and enjoyed the result of his actions. He did have favourite colours that appealed more to him - the yellow and blue - and would usually select these first if given the choice. We soon introduced ordinary crayons though as I felt that his manipulation skills were good and, as long as supervised, he would not chew them. He much preferred these and actually found them easier to use and control. However, we still use these crayons with the rubbing plate as they work so nicely with this.

Overall, I would say that these are a nice idea but they were a bit of an unnecessary purchase for us.
They do wear well though and will not snap like other crayons might, so we have packed them away and put them by for when we have another addition - maybe they will like them a bit more!