The Grade One Colours: turquoise, scarlet, violet pink, and wild strawberry

Markers have had a lot of appeal to me ever since I was given the green light to start using them. They come in vivid colours and usually produce lush, unbroken lines As soon as they were introduced to me, I immediately abandoned crayons and pencil crayons. Crayons were always a bit disappointing to me. They look so charming in the box but when they are applied to paper they do not saturate the paper as their marker counterparts do. They break when they are gripped too hard. For these reasons, I was a little puzzled when my daughter started lobbying a few weeks ago for a box of crayons. She's had access to markers for a couple of years now. What would she want with crayons? She was so vehement I was curious to see what she would do with them. The crayons came home and through her eyes I began to understand. "Oh Mama, I love this one. It is called scarlet." "How about this one, turquoise?" I started to see how the nomenclature of these colors stirred some new possibilities in her. I also discovered that,with crayons, you can mix colours and create new ones that you can also name if you like. This is something I had never explored.

This is an amazing chart of all the Crayola colours that have been created since their invention. Stephen Von Worley at datapointed.net has charted all the crayons ever named by Crayola between 1903 and 2010.

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