Children’s creativity – encouraging drawing and coloring

The simple acts of drawing and coloring are literally childs’ play, however, both of these past-times play an important role in your child’s physical, emotional and cognitive development. Like no other activity, the hobby of drawing and coloring allows young children to express themselves and their emotions, experience autonomy and build their confidence.

Parents and caregivers such as teachers and grandparents can promote the hobby of drawing and coloring as a way to improve physical, social, emotional and cognitive development-and to have a lot of fun along the way too. Here are some suggestions:

1. Provide your grankids with nontoxic materials, blank sheets of white paper and coloring pages.

2. Model drawing by example. Show children that you enjoy drawing and coloring too – make designs but do not show your children what they should draw.

3. Encourage all drawing and coloring efforts by talking about the beautiful colors, the lines and shapes the child has made.

4. Rather than ask “What is it?,” say “Tell me everything about your drawing”. Asking “What is it?” suggests to the child that s/he has failed to depict what they intended.

5. Talk about issues such as thin or thick, or the concept of wide, narrow, dark, light, edge, shape, contour, etc.

6.Display their art in a prominent place – such as the kitchen fridge, and in places where visitors to your home will see them. Point them out to visitors – the praise for the work will boost a child’s self esteeem and confidence.

7. Give children the freedom to choose the subjects of their drawings and of their coloring sheets. Some argue that coloring sheets do little to foster children’s creativity – however they play a pivotal role in developing a child’s fine motor skills – a pre-cursor to writing – and often encourage children who wouldn’t otherwise draw and color to pick up a crayon to color in their favourite character. For example little girls may enjoy coloring images of fairytale princesses while boys enjoy coloring images of favourite characters such as Pokemon or Spongebob Squarepants and at sites like Spongebob Coloring Pages you’ll find many free Spongebob colouring Always supervise younger children while they draw and color – crayons pose a choking risk.