Before we started homeschooling, my oldest and even my then 3yo would only use markers.  I could never convince them to use the crayons or the colored pencils.  We had a nice big box of markers that I had to sort through constantly to weed out the ones that no longer worked.  It always irked me that you couldn't blend colors nicely with markers, you couldn't color fine details and the good, juicy ones bled through a page of paper.  I knew why my kids loved them - they are so bright and I'm sure they felt very grown up using something that took scrubbing to wash off. 

When I started to look into homeschooling I read somewhere, another woman's distaste for the markers and she had banned them from the house.  What a thought!  It never occurred to me to just make them off limits!  So I tried it.  I still kept the good markers but I told the children "Markers are very useful for posters when we have a yard sale or something but you are not to use them for anything else." 

At first there was some grumbling, I admit it.  I had to continually explain to my children that you get much lovlier results with colored pencils, you can use their finely sharpened tips to work color into tiny places and that even crayons can be blended to make multi-faceted colors.  I encouraged paint a little more (we still don't paint as much as I'd like.) and asked them to experiment with other mediums such as chalk or even oil crayons though they are messy.

Three years later, I am pleased to say my children have their markers but they prefer their colored pencils the most. 

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