The Benefits of Drawing and Coloring-In for Young Learners Plus 30 Downloadable Animal Worksheets To Color In.

All kids love to draw and color in, and they all come home from school at least once a week with another picture that they drew for you. Whilst their artistic creations are cute, have you ever found yourself wondering if they’re really an important part of school? Are they actually supporting the academic atmosphere? The answer is YES, coloring is important in early childhood education for a lot of reasons!

1. It Helps To Develop Hand-Strength

One of the biggest reasons coloring is important for young learners is because it helps them to develop their hand strength. As adults, we have been writing, typing, and doing various activities all of our lives which means we take our hand strength for granted. Toddlers and young learners, however, are just beginning to build those muscles.

Hand strength is important for all hand-related fine motor skills, especially handwriting. Writing takes strength and dexterity, and coloring helps exercise these muscles. Hand strength will also help children to be able to grip and use pencils correctly..

2. Helps Them to Practice Gripping.

A crayon or pencil are most likely the first writing instruments your child will hold. By practicing drawing or coloring, your child is developing their proper pencil grip. Pencil grip is part hand strength and part practice. Coloring allows for both! 

3. Develops and Encourages Creativity

Giving a child the opportunity to draw or color in helps to stimulate their creativity. Colors, shapes, interpretations, and imagined stories are all present when a child is coloring. Even if your child draws the same picture over and over, they’re still engaging their creativity.

4. Develops Self-Expression

When children have the opportunity to color, they engage in their independent creativity and self-expression. What colors should they choose? What should they draw? What will it look like? Will it be big or small? Will it have lots of colors or just one color? Will the faces be smiling or frowning? Chances are, the answers to their questions are either consciously or subconsciously expressing themselves or their emotions. Drawing is a chance for children to work through their emotions and to express themselves in a safe environment. Young learners may not always have the exact words to say exactly how they are feeling, but drawing or coloring in will let them express themselves without needing the vocabulary to do so.

5. Develops and Enhances Coordination and Fine Motor Skills

Young learners are still developing their coordination and fine motor skills that will eventually support their daily activities. Typing, writing, cooking, general chores, reading a book, using tools, doing their hair — pretty much everything requires motor skills. When children draw or color in, they are developing their fine motor skills and coordination. Other coloring-related activities that help develop fine motor coordination include dot-to-dot pictures, tracing, coloring inside the lines of coloring pages, playing tic-tac-toe, and copying a picture onto a blank sheet of paper.

6. Helps Develop Concentration

Coloring in is also a great concentration-building exercise. Concentration is an important skill for children to learn, not only for their academic careers but for their professional careers as well. Concentration is what helps us see through any task from start to finish. As children's concentration and focus develop, their drawings become more detailed taking more time to complete.