When I was a child I just loved to draw and paint but, as I remember, before I even could begin to draw accurately I used to color in. The next stage was to learn to draw using stencils and then I graduated to be able to draw freehand which provided me with an absolutely fantastic sense of achievement. I went on to love drawing but the point I am trying to make is that it all started with the simple yet effective art of coloring in!
I was 20 years old when my love affair with coloring was re-ignited. Just about to fly home on a 14 hour flight from New Zealand, I was in the airport book store looking for a magazine to pass some hours when my eye was caught by an intriguing looking coloring book. I thought to myself: 14 hour flight....why not try coloring? Armed with a box of pencil crayons and not really expecting my interest to last long, I fastened my seat belt as the plane began its take-off. Thinking full well that the coloring would only last a few minutes before I was lured into the mega-selection of in-flight movies, I was curiously surprised when 30 minutes passed...then an hour...and then 2 hours and I had not even checkout out the movie selection! I had finished my first page in my brand new coloring book and still had 12 hours of flying time left. The rest of the flight passed quickly and gloriously. My love for coloring has only deepened, and here are the reasons why.
So weve identified that every new skill that we learn requires a step-by-step approach. Youll notice that even coloring in can be broken down in smaller steps in terms of the stages of the development of this type of skill. A child will begin by simple learning how to pick up and hold a crayon or colored pencil. Then they will learn how to apply the color onto the paper. Youll notice that your child goes over the lines of the outlined drawing at first but dont worry, this is only natural. Your child will soon learn how to color within the outlined areas. You should encourage your child to select different colors for different parts of the drawing.
