1. Practices and Improves Fine Motor Skills
This time last year, I met with our school’s Occupational Therapist and he really opened my eyes to the benefits of coloring for our young learners. What I had once thought of as busy work, quickly became something I incorporated into my classroom as much as possible.
One of the biggest benefits of coloring is that each time a child picks up and puts down a crayon they are practicing their pencil grip. In doing so, they are committing their pencil grip to muscle memory. Children need hand strength to manipulate writing utensils. By coloring, children are developing the muscles in their fingers and hands, making future writing tasks easier.
BONUS TIP: Use crayons instead of markers because the waxy crayons are harder to push across the paper and build muscles better than a slippery marker.
2. Improves Hand Eye Coordination
Another benefit of coloring is that it can directly impact a child’s hand eye coordination. Coloring usually requires children to color in a certain area or “stay in the lines” this in and of itself helps to develop hand eye coordination. In fact the simple acts of holding crayons, choosing colors, deciding where each color should be used and even sharpening crayons can all help develop strong hand-eye coordination in young children.
Coloring (and writing) also requires two hands. One hand to hold the paper (helper hand) and one to do the coloring. The helper hand allows children to build dexterity and muscle strength in their dominant hand. This is a skill that is also needed in later years to help with writing tasks.
BONUS TIP: Use broken crayons to help students build muscles, because smaller crayons require greater strength to push across the paper.
3. Spacial Awareness
Visual perception important to later writing tasks that require: awareness of lines and margins, writing within a given space. Coloring can have a huge impact on spacial awareness. Coloring in the lines and staying within the boundaries of the coloring page will help children prepare for writing tasks that will require them to write on lines and stay within margins.
4. Creative Outlet
The sky is the limit when a child is given a box of crayons and a blank piece of paper. When they are coloring on blank paper it doesn’t matter if they stay in the lines or color an abstract masterpiece-coloring fosters creativity and artistic expression.
5. Color Recognition
Children often learn their colors from a crayon box. They learn to discriminate between yellows and greens, oranges and reds and purple and blues etc…
Even better If using paint, children can mix paint to explore how colors are made and experiment with the color spectrum in an experiential way!
6. Focus and Concentration
Young children are just beginning to develop coordination and the ability to focus. Yet another benefit of coloring, is that it is an activity that fosters and strengthens a child’s ability to attend to a task for increasing lengths of time.
Often, in schools, students become fatigued when writing. Coloring is a way to continue to build the small muscles in their hands to increase their writing stamina and endurance.
7. Stress Release
Finally, coloring is a huge trend in adult mindfulness and it has the same effects in children. According to colorit.com the benefits of coloring are:
- Your brain experiences relief by entering a meditative state
- Stress and anxiety levels have the potential to be lowered
- Negative thoughts are expelled as you take in positivity
- Focusing on the present helps you achieve mindfulness
- Unplugging from technology promotes creation over consumption
- Coloring can be done by anyone, not just artists or creative types
- It’s a hobby that can be taken with you wherever you go
Providing young children the opportunity to color and be calm and quiet provides an outlet for emotions and an avenue for stress release.
Click image to check out a coloring resource that has all the benefits of coloring with added bonus of editable content!
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