Time to get your Crafti Bug Colouring Entries in!
The Colouring in Debate...
Colouring is a great way for children to learn a number of skills. Some criticise colouring suggesting that it stifles creativity because children don't get the opportunity to express their own creativity having the freedom to draw their own freehand pictures. This statement is a valid to a point, in that a child does have to follow the lines of the image; a pre-set structure. However creativity is more than freehand drawing. Children need some structure initially to learn proportions, but the structure provided by the colouring page helps in many other ways.Detail
Give a young child a colouring in sheet and they will initially start scribbling all over it creating their 'masterpiece.' However, take time to show them how to start by following the lines slowly and carefully with one colour until they had filled the region surrounded by the black line and before long they learn how to stay within the lines to create some amazingly detailed pictures, all neatly coloured. We did this with our eldest child and at the age of three she was able to stay within the lines of detailed pictures, unfortunately however, people in disbelief stated that she should not get others to help her; a severe blow for one who was doing some amazing work! People simply did not believe it possible for a three year old to do, until they watched her do it.
Concentration
By focusing on the details, children increase their attention span because they spend a lot of effort concentrating on following the lines and understanding where the boundaries of colours lie. Children that are intently concentrating on their work are not so easily distracted by the events occurring around them. This can be a good thing for children, especially when there may be issues in their lives, which may be stressful. By giving a child something to concentrate on, it helps to distract the child from such events, and can help the child divert his/ her emotions into something constructive and relaxing.
Fine Motor Skills
Because children need to follow prescribed details in colouring pages, they learn to control the movement of their arms, hands and fingers. As details of the colouring page become more complex, the movements required to colour them become finer and the child, in desiring to stay within the line, will develop these fine motor skills quickly. Furthermore, having followed prescribed lines, children learn how to draw shapes and develop a sense of proportion. Eventually they are able to make their own additions to coloured images, completing some lines where lines may have been 'cut off.'
Colours and Colour Co-ordination
Although colouring generally does not encourage blending of colours, although nothing prevents it if the child is able, children are able to learn how colours work together to create images that look good. Children don't take long, once they start working within the lines, to realise that the sky looks better blue and the grass green. Our middle child started taking this a step further and amazed us by being able to pick colours that worked incredibly well in clothing, simply because she had learned to co-ordinate colours that worked well while colouring.
Creativity
Because a colouring page has already established boundaries it does not rule out the freedom to express creativity. Firstly, children are able to express their creativity in the colours that they choose and they ways in which they may co-ordinate them. Secondly the intensity and stroke patterns that they use can help create different effects adding some creative flair. As children get older, they start to see that colouring in pages often eliminate detail to simplify the image. As a result older children start to add back details that they believe are missing, thus expressing a sense of interpretation of art and expressing creative ability.
Colouring in Pages Enhance the Development of Skills Necessary for Creativity
Colouring pages certainly don't allow the freedom of freehand drawing, but they are a tremendous tool in helping children to develop fine motor skills, learn about colours and how colours work together. They also work well to help children develop excellent concentration skills, focussing their attention on a single activity in a disciplined manner (guided by boundaries) and gaining an understanding of how to draw objects in proportion.
The criticism that colouring pages stifle creativity is flawed in the sense that each child will learn to express creativity in many different ways adding their own personal touches to make their page 'special.' Even children given the opportunity to draw freehand need some creative inspiration, just as children colouring in a page may do, but colouring pages help guide children to accomplish works of art that they can delight in when they still do not yet possess the skills to draw the same image freehand.
