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. 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 have you drawn?,” say “Tell me everything about your drawing”. Asking “What is it?” suggests to the child that he may have failed to draw the image correctly.
5. Talk about concepts like thin, thick, 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, friends and relatives – the praise fthey will receive for the work will boost a child’s self esteeem and confidence.
7.Give kids the freedom to choose the subjects of their drawings and the types of coloring sheets they would like. Some argue that coloring sheets do very little to foster children’s creativity – however they do play a vital 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 Spongebob coloring page Always supervise younger children while they draw and color – because crayons pose a choking hazard.
Arts and Crafts – the benefits to your children
The benefits of arts and crafts such as drawing and coloring for kids are frequently argued by child development experts, educators and parents alike… especially so for the real impact they have on child development. However, it is difficult to argue with the top three reasons why we should all encourage the children in our care to take part in arts and crafts.
Creativity – If you were to ask a cross section of individuals what is the first personality characteristic that arts and crafts will develop in a young child – most would answer ‘creativity’. And they are correct. Everyone has natural talents and skills and it is possible to improve and boost them… even if you only have a little natural talent. Creativity enables your child to try out and benefit from new
ideas, options and alternatives in any future career. Kids learn to do things in new ways and literally profiting from thinking “out of the box”.
Perseverance – Perseverance is perhaps the single most important quality for any successful individual – be they a a business person, sportsman or other professional.In fact, most well-known accomplishments in life have been attributed to perseverance alone. Arts and crafts improve everyone’s level of perseverance. For instance, children learn to keep trying until they complete the task, be it a sculpture or a coloring in sheet.If something unexpected goes wrong… they are encouraged to persist by trying new ways and means and the pay-off is a wonderful piece of art that they have created.
Concentration – Similar to having perseverance, developing concentration is another quality well-worth having as an individual. Drawing, coloring, sculpting, painting and even doodling will definitely teach your child to focus on one specific task at hand… ignoring other distractions. In short they overall concentration will definitely improve.
Even from a young age children can draw and color – so give them blank pieces of paper or coloring in sheets so that they can scribble away to their hearts content whilst also improving their fine motor skills.
For example little girls enjoy coloring images of princesses and fairies and at sites like Fairy Coloring Pages you’ll find the best fairy colouring
Little boys on the other hand prefer pictures of cars, trucks and machinery – however, favorite characters such as those from Disney movies are also hits with little boys.
Give your child several opportunities to experience being creative, concentrating and perservering through the fun medium of arts and crafts. Provide them with materials and resources and the occasional canvas so that they can be creative and feel pride in what they create.