Coloring is a great way to bond. Ask your friends over for some wine, cheese and coloring. Perhaps at first they might look at you with skeptical eyes and doubt; but hand over a fresh sheet of paper, some vibrant or glitter colored pens and in just minutes you will not be able to pry those colors out of their fingers. Soon you will be visiting easily, looking over at each-others masterpieces from time to time to admire their selection of colors. You will begin to feel like you have time-traveled back into grade 2 and you do not really want to leave. Coloring is freeing and has no expectations. The beautiful thing about this craft is that there is no pressure to finish, to use a certain color or even to stay in the lines!!! There is absolute freedom involved in those precious hours where you just get to color.
The art of coloring is a simple joy. All you need is a coloring book and your choice of tools. From here you can immerse yourself fully into the craft without agonizing about what to make, how to read the pattern, and how will it turn out? Coloring is a a form of meditation. There is something truly hypnotizing that happens with you sit down with a fresh box of pencil crayons, choose the color that jumps out at you and begin your journey into the page. Time loses its grip on the mind and enables the color-er to become present in the moment, in the line and in the color gliding onto the paper.
While coloring pages may seem simple in the minds of parents and other adults these days, they are often the passport into a more creative style of play. Yes, your child will simply color the picture online, but by doing so, she is learning not only to stay inside the lines, but to balance color and texture and to simply use her imagination. If a coloring page for kids is the first step into a full-fledged imagination based entertainment package, it is unlikely many parents will find them simple for long.
