If you don’t like the idea of letting your kids touch the screen of your tablet under any circumstances whatsoever, there’s a way you can protect your screen and let your kids have some tablet playtime, too. Griffin’s Crayola Light Marker gets kids drawing and painting without ever making contact with the screen.
Instead, the single marker emits a beam of light that is read by the iPad’s front-facing camera (the accompanying app is for iOS only). That beam is translated into lines and brush strokes on the screen. Instead of a whole set of colored markers, kids will see a crayon box on screen, which will include digital crayons, paints, and stamps. They can use those to draw whatever they would like, or play games and activities like connect the dots. There’s a game involving popping colored balloons, jigsaw puzzles, coloring book pages, and a hide-and-seek game where kids can use the marker as flashlight to hunt around dark rooms for objects.
It’s art at its least messy and least damaging to your iPad’s screen, so it’s hard to argue with that. The Crayola Light Marker is available now for $30, and the accompanying app is available as a free download.
