I haven't had any problems with the markers because they are washable sot little hands and faces clean right up. I have a new baby here and he isn't even 10 months old yet. He coloured a couple times with the others in the past two weeks and only once did his soother fall out of his mouth and he took a big slug of marker but the look on his face was priceless, yuck! With little ones like that I keep the soother in their mouth when we are crafting.

I use my dining table with booster chairs and don't have any other table available. So children have to learn that there are two purposes for that space - meals and crafting - two totally separate things. So I make sure there are no food or sippy cups in sight when we craft and tell them from day one that we eat our food in our mouths but we don't put our crafts in our mouth. It's the same in the toyroom, we don't put our toys in our mouths. If you are diligent they learn and I don't have a big problem. There are always those overly oral kids that need constant reminding.

I agree with Playfelt about crayons as well, but we use markers, crayons, home-made finger paints, brushes with paint, I go through tons of glue, all kinds of mediums.