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

Parents and caregivers such as grandparents can promote 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 is it?,” say “Tell me everything about your drawing”.Asking “What is that?” suggests to the child that s/he has failed to depict what they intended.

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 – 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 Spongebob coloring Always supervise younger children while they draw and color – crayons pose a choking hazard.

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Filed under: Drawing and Art

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