Quick Tip - Coloring inside the lines

When my daughter was three she attended a daycare for a couple hours a week. One day she came home and was distressed about coloring inside the lines. The "teacher" said she shouldn't "scribble" and needed to "color inside the lines." Needless to say I was upset... and thus today's post!

If you are the parent of a preschooler, let him/her color anyway she/he wants to color. Just the manipulation of and basic hand-eye coordination used when coloring with crayons/markers/pencils is a good start for children this age. Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT push the "color inside the lines" bit.. that will come with age and maturity.

Teachers, if you teach in the primary grades (K-3) your students likely have many opportunities to color. This goes back to an earlier post about art vs. skill-focused projects... If the purpose of the coloring sheet is to work on eye-hand coordination and controlling writing utensils by all means, teach them how to color inside the lines. INSIST that they try their best to "stay inside the lines." However, if you are NOT teaching a skill, and the child is coloring for the sake of coloring or to create a piece of art, let them color however they wish. Let them express themselves while they are still young enough to feel good about their coloring regardless of how "messy" you as the adult view it. (You never know if you have the next Jackson Pollock in your room and you would hate to stifle his/her creativity at such an early age!!)

With that said... simply saying "color inside the lines" or "stay inside the lines" is NOT teaching the children a skill. You need to demonstrate coloring. You need to "think out loud" while you color on the board or on an overhead. Walk around the room and give one-on-one assistance to your students. Then.... have days where they can color for colorings sake... for the sake of being a child... cuz dagnabit sometimes it does feel good to just SCRIBBLE!!!