Quite a few weeks ago we had our reason to visit a toy store and let older daughters choose something for themselves from there. We ended up with a toy guitar and 3 art sets. One of the items we bought was Djeco Scratch cards set. It turned out a really marvellous buy — the activity kept girls amused at least for 3 days. They followed instructions and scratched only suggested patterns at first. Then they started to think up their own patterns. But in the end they completely removed all of the upper layer just to see the patterns hidden inside.

Seeing my kids excitement about this set, I remembered an old good art class from my elementary school. What we did there was colouring a paper with watercolours, then covering it with candle wax and applying a layer of a black ink over it. Then we took something sharp (a nail, for instance) and scratched out our designs or illustrations.