I’ve always been a big advocate of keeping my kids’ games and videos put away at the dinner table. Especially in restaurants, which is why I have a special place in my heart for those that provide crayons to kids — in particular the smaller, more wiggly ones. So I think plenty of other parents will also be thrilled to discover the new OMY color-your-own placemats that we spotted at Toy Fair, from the same clever company that invented the artistic giant coloring posters our kids adore.
I absolutely love these for dining out, dinner at the grandparents’ place, birthday parties, road trips, or just a way to make dinner a little more fun when your kids have friends over.
Plus, purely selfishly, there’s something I appreciate about being able to have some adult conversation while the kids are occupied, if only for a few moments.
Each pad comes with 24 recycled paper sheets and you have a choice of three themes. There are two with lots of fun, intricate coloring pages, and one aptly called “games” that blends the coloring with mazes, dot-to-dots, tic-tac-toe. Basically a more artful version of the stuff children are used to seeing on color-your-own placemats in restaurants. Minus the bad local ads for real estate firms, or the cartoon characters trying to sell you a side of fries with that.
Find the new OMY color-your-own placemats online from OMY Design & Play at the AMEICO site, and coming soon to cool indie boutiques everywhere.
We have some plastic place mats that have the states, ABC’s, math problems and such but they’ve gotten a little old. I think we’ll try this as we definitely need a change when we go out with our five little ones (I call them little nuggets).