Learning with Crayola Create and Play

Kids ages 3+ will love learning through play and building their creative confidence in the Crayola Create and Play app!!

One of the best ways to get kids to learn new things is to combine it with something fun and creative.  The Crayola Create and Play app is just that! Made for ages 3+, Create and Play is a great way for younger children to boost their confidence through creative self-expression and colorful problem solving skills through play. I put the app to the test while playing with my 3-year-old niece, and let's just say that we had a great time!

This post is sponsored by Red Games Co., the developers of Crayola Create & Play

Once you download the app and start a 7-day free trial, your child immediately has full-access to play all of the activities. With the app available on iOS, Android, and Amazon devices, it's the perfect activity to keep kids entertained on road trips, vacations, and virtually anywhere that you want to keep your child busy (and learning!). Once the free trial is over, you can subscribe for an entire year of play for less than taking the whole family to the movies!

The Art Station section of the app has multiple activities dedicated to coloring. Kids can choose from a large range of colors and shades to complete all kinds of creative and colorful masterpieces. Coloring is not only fun for kids, but it can help them learn colors, nurtures creativity, encourages focus, and sharpens motor skills.

Another benefit to being a yearly subscriber is surprising your child with new creative content and activities that are added to the app every month. This includes fun-filled seasonal activities, learning activities, and games! In February, we had a great time coloring the entire collection of Valentine's Day coloring pages using a rainbow of digital Crayola crayons, markers, and colored pencils!

It was really fun to watch my niece's confidence grow with each picture she completed. The coloring pages are easy for little fingers to color. Instead of scribbling all over the page, each section of the image is separate so that they can easily color each part of the picture in different colors. For more creativity, there's a Free Drawing activity that allows kids to practice hand-eye coordination through drawing lines and shapes using multiple colors for artistic self-expression.

As a homeschool mom, my favorite section is the Discovery Classroom. The Spell and Spray activity is so fun, and helps kids with letter recognition. A word pops up on the screen, one letter at a time, and the Crayola crayon cheers you on as you match the letter stencils to complete the words. My niece was so cute as she tried matching letter shapes and got so excited when she recognized the letters from her own name.

Once the word has been completed, the next step is to spray paint over the stencils! The activity shows kids how to write one letter at a time by following arrows with the spray paint. Since it's all about learning, it's okay to color - or spray, outside the lines. When each letter of the word has been painted, the stencils drop off the screen for the big reveal!

I really like how the app spells the word out, highlighting each letter, and then says what word they spelled. This is a great activity to build important skills like recognizing letters, identifying letter names and sounds, drawing letters, and how to put letters together to create words. The more practice kids get, the easier it will be for them to learn to read. Of course, to the kids, this all feels like playing!

Color-mixing is a fun activity for any age, but is a totally new concept for younger children. The color mixing lab is all about experimenting with color and discovering what happens when colors are mixed together. By tapping on the different color hoses, color is added to the bowl and mixed so that they can immediately see a reaction.

Throughout the activity, kids are learning to recognize colors as they are used and what new colors can be created by mixing two (or more) of them together. This activity goes an extra step to add patterns and textures into the newly mixed bowl of color to create a wax sculpture. The entire process from start to finish made my niece feel like she was the creative genius behind the project, and she was SO proud of each one of her creations!

The arcade is where you'll find fun and challenging games to play. My niece's favorite was the Scoop Stack game, where you try to stack as many ice cream scoops on top of a cone as you can. It might not seem like it at first glance, but interactive video games like this are actually great for children's brain development. They practice hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills, and boost confidence. It's also kind of fun to watch a giant ice cream cone tumble to the floor, right?!

Once we were done playing, it was fun to visit the Gallery and see all of the completed art projects that were made. My niece loved seeing everything she created in one place, and was so excited to see one of the Crayola crayons walking around and reacting to her art. Needless to say, my 3-year-old niece definitely approves of the Crayola Create and Play app! As an adult, I had a lot of fun creating artwork of my own, and I think this would make a great gift for the kids in your life who love coloring and would enjoy learning through play. 

As an extra surprise, we are giving away a ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION to the Crayola Create and Play app for one reader! Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below letting me know what your child's favorite color is!

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