Coloring inside the lines actually promotes literacy skills, too. Remember, strong fine motor skills and attention to detail makes for a strong writer, too. This is why it’s part of preschool and kindergarten curriculum.

My one n half year old son loves to look at pictures in coloring books. Thou he is not fond of holding a pencil yet. Wats the correct age to offer color pencils to a child?

We are always into open ended or process oriented art. It’s the art enthusiast and Montessori teacher in me :)

My girls get a new art journal monthly, its amazing to see the changes overtime. With it, they use artist quality pencils, colored pencils, crayons, oil pastels, chalk, glue, scraps, etc.

I agree with you 100%. We have coloring books, but they never get chosen.

We don’t buy them but occasionally use them when they are given to us. I tend not to like the ones that are especially commercial (which are exactly the ones my kids tend to love) but I don’t mind things as much that are more scientific looking (drawings of actual bugs, leaves, etc.) (PS. love the monthly journal mentioned above, going to implement that with the older ones!)

My little sister wouldn’t colour in as a child “why would I? I can already see what it is” was her response! I think that says it all
We have colouring books, but don’t colour in the lines (my youngest is nearly 3) we also have joining dots, and pattern making and all manner of things. It’s part of a repetoire of arty things in this house. I have a chart with a number of black and white line drawings of Christmas baubles on my fridge, and for every 1/2lb I lose, I colour one in!

We have lots of colouring in books and lots of blank paper, crayons, colour pencils and felt tip pens. My daughter gets to choose what she wants to use and she loves it. She loves her colouring in books and without prompting her tries to stay inside the lines. This promotes fine motor skills. Even when she has a plain piece of paper she asks me to draw her pictures so she can colour them in…. So no I don’t think colouring in books restricts her creativity in any way. We also have a huge box full of arts and crafts stuff to paint and glue and she has free access to this as well. I never tell her how to use the materials in there she has a very good imagination and has made some amazing pieces of art.

My daughter loves to draw and color outside the lines even on coloring books…=) BTW, where can i get that marker set shown above? thank you!!

Thanks for all the great comments, everyone! I love hearing everyone’s thoughts and approaches to coloring books.

@Jenny The marker set is is one I made from a cookie tin and plaster of paris. The instructions are in MaryAnn Kohl’s book First Art. We’ve used these since my older daughter was little and they are a great way to help little kids put the markers back in the caps and also provide a nice stand for the markers.

Jean, I follow your blog, Artful Parent, loyally. Thanks for sharing this! Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Have you read “Young at Art” by Susan Striker. That’s where I first read about the “anti-coloring book” philosophy. I loved every page in that book. I think every parent and teacher should read Striker’s book.

My children use coloring books but I don’t make them color in the lines, instead I praise their use of colors and dark and light lines and the shapes they used. But I’d have to agree, my children enjoy a sketch book or sheet of blank paper to a coloring book any day.

I haven’t heard this theory since I was taking my Early Childhood Education 15 years ago… when we were told it wasn’t valid. ALOT of creative people had coloring books as children. Many kids enjoy them. I see no reason to withhold them from my kids.

My 3 year old does both. She always has. She loves coloring in books AND creating her own art. I’m not going to keep either one from her. What I think is important is allowing them to do what the want. If they don’t like one or the other, that’s fine. She’s always known how to hold a pencil correctly (it came perfectly natural for her). She’s gotten to the point that she’s able to distinctly draw flowers, people, houses and just the other day, she obviously drew Spiderman for her friend’s birthday. She’s incredibility creative with her art, songs that she makes up, stories she tells and dances she creates. I’m couldn’t be prouder as an artist myself.

I think you’re overthinking it. Relax, have fun, it all works out in the end. Getting stressed over COLOURING BOOKS??? Really?

My daughter LOVES coloring books. She will sometimes trace what the pictures are in the coloring book so she can re color what she did in the book. Which is interesting to watch because I have seen a MAJOR improvement in not only her art work, but her writing. Her letters look more mature and she is only 6 years old. My son on the other hand doesn’t color in coloring books, but HE LOVES to look at the ones that my daughter colored in because of the bright colors that she has used. With my son…he is currently being tested and evaluated for Autism, because he has all the signs of Autism. He doesn’t like the way crayons and markers feel in his hand so he doesn’t color with them, instead he colors with pencils or pens, but still I think coloring books are used as a learning tool for children…it sets goals for them and what can be their future if they choose to use coloring books, just like my daughter does. She is currently attending a Montessori school and when she comes home she looks forward to writing more and when she thinks that she messed up she pulls out her paper and starts to trace over what characters are in her coloring book…again…a learning tool. She is USING her coloring books as a tool to better her writing. She has the ability to better her skills just by using something as simple as a coloring book….and we have TONS in the house…we like to keep our options open for our children who are the most open-minded children I have ever met.

OK… This is Dumbest thing I have ever Read.. Coloring is a part of childhood. I have about 20 or so coloring books and my 2 boys, 5 year old and 2 year old Love coloring.. My 5 year old colors everyday in school. They also have access to blank paper, construction paper, and other are supplies, they just don’t color in books they used everything including a white board.. Coloring in coloring books has always been one of my favorite pastimes since I was a kid.. There is 100% nothing wrong with coloring. Quit over thinking something so simple as a toddler coloring!!!

You really seem to over analyze things. You make things too complicated when it comes too kids. Coloring books are just fine. My kids love coloring pictures of things they are familiar with like a dog or a bus. Kids can still be creative with a coloring book. They can color it any color they want, and scribble outside the lines. I think a coloring book gives the kids a pictures of something they can be proud of. my kids love showing me the dog they colored (scribbled). People need to relax more. Not everything out there for kids is bad. Especially a harmless coloring book. Your kids will still be just as creative coloring a dog picture then if they scribbled freehand. Scribbling a coloring book is really no different then scribbling a plank page.

I am a child care center director and toddler teacher and LOVE open ended art opportunites and we say all the time “it’s the process, not the product.” However, my children have and love coloring books! I love the comments above where the children feel like they can color the story books. I also completely agree with the comment that attention to detail is important in further writing and drawing skills. However a pre K or older might be capable of coloring inside the lines but a toddler never will, even if you ask them to! They just aren’t capable. Children develop from the middle out and the top down. That means their arm movements (scribbling) develop long before their finger movements (fine motor/detailed writing). So basically if you are giving a child a picture to color, whatever. But if you are asking them/expecting them to color tidy it’s very unrealistic and inappropriate. Nothing wrong with having a picture to scribble on top of!

i give my 25 month old color books plain paper what ever is abole to be colored on and she does her own thing on the page, sometimes she colors some then other times she draws her own shapes on the page, she isnt told to stay in the lines! i like to let her brain run wild!!!!!!!!!

Yawn.

I think she put too much thought into this. Coloring books only set a child “up for failure” if the parent tries to direct, over analyze and manipulate their child in a coloring project. My kids LOVE coloring books. Coloring books have neat things like color by number, dot to dot and mazes, which helps children follow direction and rules and helps kids with their hand eye coordination. My kids have activity books, coloring books and good ole construction paper. There is a time for everything, rule following and self expression. I think when it comes to something as fun as coloring, parents should not put limits on their child. If my children want a coloring book with Thomas the Train or Princesses on them, I say let them have it. There are much bigger parenting issues to worry about than allowing or not allowing their kids to color in a coloring book! Come on!

I can see where you are coming from, and I do agree that too many times kids are told/taught to ‘color in the lines’…and it used to drive me crazy, whenever I’d hear an adult suggesting that my child needed to learn to do so, before he did learn- in his own time, which I thought was telling and so good. We didn’t ‘push’ his coloring in the lines, just every once in a while early on showed him a few times how it was done. I never wanted/want him to feel that he HAD to do it, so after those first times, I stopped even doing that. But, I don’t agree with all that you use as your argument against kids having coloring books. My son, for instance, has had many coloring books, and learned to write EARLIER than the typical child, and very well, I might add. And, furthermore, he taught himself a good deal of that writing. He also is very, very artistic- he even went through a phase for more than a couple of years of drawing constantly on the side of our freezer (which, most people might not like, but we were ‘cool’ (no pun intended) about it, especially since it was done with washable crayons. He is now turning 6 years old, tomorrow, and one of his very favorite hobbies (although he does it so often, I hesitate to even call it a hobby!) is drawing/painting. He draws extremely well, by the way- better than I do. And, I absolutely loved coloring in coloring books as a child, myself, was and am quite creative/artistic in many ways- and love that my child enjoys his coloring books. He actually is sporadic about coloring in the books, and draws more than he does color, though, compared to what I did as a child. I STILL love coloring in coloring books, and know many adults that say that they do, too!

That’s crazy to say that they compare their drawings to ours only to set themselves up for failure! This is truly an opinionated statement. That would mean children compare every aspect of life to ours and consider themselves less capable when it is the exact opposite (until they reach the age of trying to find themselves and that’s way past coloring books.) They observe us and learn by imitation and what we teach them. In their minds, as long as you encourage them, theirs looks better than ours! Children develop fine motor skills and better writing skills earlier on when practicing to color inside the lines and even tracing. Of course we don’t put them down when they go outside the lines, we say “That’s awesome how you added extra hair” or whatever it may be. Children feel so proud even at the age of two when they see that they drew all over that big dinosaur in the coloring book. A large variety of abstract arts is great, and that is what we create here at home the majority of the time. But if you sit back and watch, they are trying to draw circles and different shapes anyways. If you want to say they are letting themselves down, imagine how hard it is for them to try and think of how to draw a circle and how frustrated they can get if they can’t remember. So help them out sometimes and coloring books are just fine for that as well. They do in fact help develop various cognitive and fine motor skills.. So go for the gold on those $.99 jumbo coloring books :)

wow that’s reading a whole lot into a coloring page. so does that mean ur child doesn’t like the movies that most coloring books are based on? my lil girl loves coloring pages but there are NO rules saying even older kids have to color inside the lines. that’s something for a child to decide. i’ve never once found a set of instructions for a coloring book. (outside of the special markers some come with.) and if you think about it, they’ll have them for homework in school at some point. will you allow ur kid to fail just because you think their schoolwork is creatively stunting?

You must be an exhausting person to be around. Seriously, you need a hobby besides hovering over your children.

Thank you so much for this post! I just figured out why my four year old wants nothing to do with coloring books. Now I am going to be trying to introduce process oriented art to him.

I would give my toddler a coloring book if I wasn’t afraid he would color in all of the Garfield and Far Side books in the house. When he has the understanding to tell his coloring books from the rest of the collection, he can have them. My middle child despised coloring, drawing, anything at all to do with crayons and markers. If a coloring book with a favorite character helped inspire him to put marker to paper, it was a good thing.

Just as coloring books are not right for every kid, they’re not wrong for every kid, either.