[mttch]

After my daughter turned 4, the ‘toy’ with the most play time and lowest clean up time was a good pad of blank paper and colouring pencils. The bonus is that it takes up little room and is therefore highly portable. Furthermore, if you forget it, you can replace it easily and cheaply!

[rolisz]

Ehrm, I beg to differ. My 4 year old daughter has recently also started loving to draw. But, she pretty much refuses to let go of her masterpieces, at least we conviced her to store them in a shoebox, so they're not spread all over the house. And the pencils... Well, I've been picking up an awful lot of pencils from all over the house.

So I'm not sure I agree with the "lowest clean up time", even though I'm really glad she's picked this up as a "hobby".

[mttch]

We have a specific area for drawing so the ‘mess’ is confined to a small area. Our daughter is happy to likes to give the drawings away and isn’t overly attached to them after they’ve been displayed for a short while - I don’t personally see this as mess as I am also quite proud of her pictures. If I judge magnetic tiles by the same measure I should also include the storage space taken up by a large plastic box of magnetic tiles, the resistance to tidy away their tile creations and the frustration when younger siblings get involved!

[furyofantares]

By my measure, ever since we started taking in art supplies 5+ years ago we have yet to finish cleaning up.