Beth Krommes

The illustrator of Phyllis Root's


The illustrations for this book are done with scratchboard and so we made Homemade Scratchboard. This takes two days, because the paint on it has to dry before you can begin scratching. I loved MaryAnn Kohl's simple directions and my students adored this activity. It's a good use for cheap crayons, such as Crayola. I would never do it with the nice Stockmar beeswax crayons. We used cardstock for the bottom but I would do posterboard next time around. Also, her tip on using soap so the paint will stick was a good one.




One last tip: it takes more paint than you think it will. A LOT more. About five times as much paint as you think it will. So have plenty of tempera on hand (you can use white if you don't want to use black).