Tips to teach kids colouring

 

Reasons a Child Might Struggle with or Dislike Coloring

A growing number of kids are struggling with basic coloring skills. So before we talk about how to teach coloring skills, let’s look at a few reasons why your child might dislike coloring.

Difficulty

• In my experience, the number one reason children don’t like to color is pretty simple, it is HARD for them. If the child hasn’t strengthened or developed one of the skills listed above, coloring might honestly be difficult for them. For instance, if they don’t have the fine motor strength, their hands get tired easily. If they haven’t developed the visual skills, they may not be able to coordinate what they see with what they color or draw.

Perfectionism

• Some children do not like coloring because they feel like they aren’t good at it. If a child is comparing his coloring to Mom’s or a friend’s, he might feel defeated and simply give up trying.

Attention / Boredom

• Let’s be honest, we live in a world full of technology and instant gratification. Why would a child want to go through all the time, effort, and trouble to color a page…when they could simply click to color shapes with one touch of a finger on their tablet. First world problems…

Tips for how to teach coloring skills

Position the child for coloring tasks

Check that the child is positioned comfortably for coloring tasks. Seated upright in a chair, with feet resting on the floor (Feet flat on the floor provides stability), or even lying prone with their belly on the floor, with forearms and elbows supported.

Develop hand strength and fine motor skills

Playdoh or resistive Theraputty work great for hand and finger strengthening. Using tongs or tweezers, or squeezing clothespins and other clips work well for strengthening tiny hands and fingers.

Develop visual perception and visual motor skills

Practice some basic visual perception skills such as simple insert puzzles or shape sorters. For visual motor skills, try stacking rings, pegboards, tracing activities, or throwing and catching a ball.

Offer a variety of media and coloring tools

Some children find it harder to color with crayons, but might be more likely to participate with other coloring tools. Don’t be afraid to get a little creative with them. Have them color in shaving cream or foam soap, color with bathtub crayons, paint or finger paint, use sidewalk chalk.

Try hand-over-hand

When toddlers are first learning a new skill, such as coloring, it can often be useful to start with a hand-over-hand technique to teach coloring. Basically, you put your hands over their hands and guide them through the motions.

Teach them proper grip and movement patterns

When toddlers or preschoolers are first learning to color, don’t worry too much about the grasp they use. As they learn to better hold and control the color, then you can begin to teach more advanced grasp patterns (tripod grasp).

Provide images with larger borders and outlines

When children are first starting out, give them color sheets with large shapes and borders. Until they develop more precise coloring skills, trying to stay within small shapes and borders can cause more frustration.

Make the outlines stand out

Another great tip for teaching children to color inside the lines is to find a way to emphasize the borders. Use a marker to trace the outlines and make them darker, or trace the outlines with glue to make them more 3-dimensional borders.

Color with them

If your child hasn’t shown much interest in coloring, show them that coloring can be fun. Get down there and color with them, make it a fun activity that you can do together.

Practice makes perfect

As with any skill, the only way to improve is through practice and repetition to refine these skills.