Developing Students Creativity and Self-Expression through Crayons

Crayons are brilliant, versatile, and economical coloring instruments that most school-age children are familiar with. Art sessions in grade school, for example, intends to nourish creativity and self-expression in children by introducing art tools and materials such as a paintbrush, scissors, paint, clay, crayons, colored papers, and others.

Creative Possibilities with Crayons

Crayons are used by middle-school students to draw colored shapes and in the process develop some creative skills they can use to express themselves. Students are humans with a natural desire to use their hands and materials as vehicles for artistic expression thus often welcome art creation opportunities.

Activities such as Crayon Melting where students create a self-initiated art design using heated wax crayons and paper is a common classroom-based activity. Art classes expand student experiences through collaboration, two-way communication, and appreciation of each students talent. It encourages the growth of visual awareness and skills to develop aesthetic understanding, coordination, concentration, and self-esteem.

Despite what many people think, creativity isn’t limited to artistic endeavours like art, music, craft, writing and drama and it’s definitely not only about a physical outcome. We can be creative with maths, science, politics, building, and business; with anything that we do! Creativity can be defined as the journey through which we use and develop our imaginations, originality, productivity and problem-solving abilities.

The same principle applies to creative expression in early childhood learning.

Every child has creative potential and every child is capable of expressing that creativity – but the process, not the quality of the outcome, should be the main focus.


Similar to pencil, chalk, paint, and others, crayons provide opportunities for students to express and communicate their interpretation of the world around them. For instance, they can observe a plant, a tree, or a piece of fruit and draw an image according to their personal representation of that object. Painting objects with crayons enable children to learn to mix colors, take responsibility for the art tool and image and develop their understanding of different media. Activities in art classes help children learn to use their imagination and express their ideas through art, sharpened their visual expression skills, create meaning by linking text and image and develop their presentation skills.

Making Good Use of Quality Crayons

Poor quality crayons often result in tears and frustration among young school children. This is because the resulting color of poor quality crayons is often not exact and cannot be combined to form new colors. Wax from a good quality crayons cannot be scratch off from the paper, they intermixed well with the pigment and produced with equally combined pigment and wax. Good quality crayon boxes with few colors are sufficient enough to produce colorful work of art as you can mix them to form new colors. For instance, putting a layer of yellow over a blue area will result to vivid green.

Thick crayons are preferred over the thin ones as they do not break easily. Similarly, using only a few pieces of crayons encourage experimentation, creativity, and application of different crayon techniques. For example, crayon boxes with few color encourage mixing of colors to produce desired color, use of both pointed and broad crayon side, and greater use of students imagination.

Crayons are not limited to drawing on paper as they can be used to draw images in many types of surfaces such as cardboards, paper gift boxes, food trays, sandpaper, and others with interest effect. Crayon rubbing, a technique to pick up the texture of a surface on paper by rubbing it with the side of a peeled crayon, is an enjoyable art class activity where students experiment and produce artworks from walls, leaves, bricks, and other surfaces. Another is Crayon resist, a technique that gives the feeling of a night picture by drawing a picture on paper with crayons, pressing hard and painting the surrounding area with dark-colored tempera paint diluted in water.



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