Good felt tips for a 7 year old

[ThursdayNext]

DS will be 7 in a few weeks and has asked for 'felt tips that are not all dried out' for his birthday.

He does draw a lot so I wanted to get him some decent ones, maybe thin and thick for outlining and colouring. Have seen lovely looking Djeco ones in a local toyshop, does anyone know if these or any other brands are particularly good?

we've always found crayola ones good - they are washable, which is a bonus even when they're 7 (my dd is 6 and she still gets as much on the table as she does on the paper...).

also, they seem to cope quite well with having the top left off occasionally, also quite a bonus considering how careless people can be...

Thanks, we haven't had Crayola ones before, just supermarket and WHsmith own brand which have been a bit rubbish.

They use a tablecloth for drawing and he is quite good at looking after stuff so would be OK with non washable if they are any better.

Our crayola ones have lasted for years. The Berol (?) ones are good too if you want thin.

Any other suggestions please?

we have the berol ones, they come in wide or thin, so we have a pack of each, the thin ones are good for drawing and fine detail the wider ones have a brush like tip and are great for colouring in. they last really well, i had them as a kid and we got some for the boys for xmas and they are still going strong, which considering they are crap at putting the lids back on i think is good. they were about £7 a pack i think?

Berol do thick and thin ones. I bought DDs a pot of 42 of each just after Christmas from amazon (about £15 per pot) and they use them most days (the pots are really handy for storing them in too). The pots have 4 pens in each colour so if one dries out they still have that colour. I've had to throw away about 8 in total as they've dried out but I've been really impressed with them and would definitely buy them again. I wasn't that impressed with Crayola, but we had them when the girls were younger so were more likely to leave the lids off...

Berol are by far the best imho

berol broad packs of 12 or 24 different colours

berol colour fine also great but too fine for kids

Another vote for the Crayola ones here!

Berol every time.

I always had Berol in my Infant classrooms and despite the worst that under 7s could throw at them they still has lots of life left in them at the end of the year. In fact ,I discovered a few in the bottom of a cupboard recently that must have been there for a couple of years. They still worked- and a couple didnt even have lids on.

Well worth the money in my opinion.

dwpanxt reminds me that they use berol pens in my boys primary school as well actually! i think they are pricier than some but def worth the money :)

Berol or Crayola then

Anyone tried the nice looking Djeco ones? Or Muji? I do like a nice bit of packaging...

Don't throw out your Berol pens straight away - you can make them go much further if you let them soak up some water into the reservoir pad inside.

You can tell my mum was a teacher!

Really barleysugar? I just chucked out a load of berol felt tips that I thought had dried out. Will try that trick with the ones that are left. Seems so wasteful to chuck them out.

DD has Staedtler Triplus pens, 20 pack from Amazon. Nice selection of colours, unlike cheapie WHSmith ones with 17 murky blues, supposed to be drying-out-proof, and come in a neat box that does a flippy thing and turns into a stand.

this looks like good value

we have some staedler ones actually and whilst they are good they tips are very soft and easily squashed iykwim? so dont last long if ds4 gets hold of the, the berol ones are much more robust.

Got WHSmith ones for first time recently and they are rubbish. Got some in pound stretcher which were a lot better!! My Ds1 (6) goes through felt tips at a rate of knots too, so am bookingmarking this. When we were little my Mum used to put a couple of drops of vinegar inside, but not sure how to get the ends off the felt tips these days, they seem welded on!

Yep berol or caroyla (school has Berol too)

Cheap unbranded felts are disappointing once DC can be trusted to put lids on and not mangle points.

The same goes for pencil crayons, cheap ones don't sharpen.

Is this the kind of Staedtler thing with a flippy box?www.amazon.co.uk/Staedtler-Triplus-Colour-323-Desktop/dp/B000KJP7HM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338585390&sr=8-1
We could keep them specially for DS so don't mind if they are not too robust

Crayola argos ones look good too

MerryMarigold, it's the shoddy WHSmith ones we need to bin

They ^^ are fab, we brought them for dd a couple of weeks ago and she says they're great.

yes they are the ones! but they are good for detail, not so good for colouring big areas as they are very fine that and the fact that the nib bit is very delicate is why i then got the berol ones :) we still have them tho and my older boys use them for detailed drawing etc but i would say you need something else for colouring in :)

FWIW the pencils are fab too and they don't break every five minutes.

Thursday, I find the fibre tip ones aren't great. They always go a bit mushy. The pound stretcher ones really were great. The nibs lasted till they dried out, and they didn't dry out that quickly either. Good value, but perhaps not for a bday present.

OK, will get Staedler ones for fine stuff and something else for thick. He just asked for pens, lego (won't need to be anything big) and chocolate raisins so think we can stretch to two packs of pens!

Just been googling, they aren't pens but what about those Stabilo Woody things? Any good?

Another suggestion: my 3 year olds know they need to put the lid on before getting out another felt tip. Takes a lot of almost constant repetition but it's worth it in the end.