Colouring has a reputation as the thing you hand a child when you need twenty minutes. It is that, and I have used it that way, and there is no shame in it.
But something else is going on in those twenty minutes, and once you know what it is you can get considerably more out of them for no extra effort.
The grip is the point
Writing is a physical skill before it is anything else. A child cannot form a letter until the hand can be told what to do, and the hand learns that by doing small controlled things repeatedly.
Colouring inside a line is a small controlled thing repeated a hundred times. It is the same muscles, the same grip, the same wrist, and it is being practised by a child who thinks they are choosing whether the fox should be purple.
Every teacher knows this. Most parents have never been told it, and it changes how the twenty minutes feel.
Then the noticing
A child colouring an animal looks at that animal longer than a child reading about it. Much longer. They are making decisions about it, which means examining it: the shape of the beak, whether the tail goes over or under, what the expression is doing.
By the end of a page they know that animal in a way they would not from three readings. And if the animal belongs to a story they have heard, the story comes back while they colour, unprompted, in fragments.
How to get the words in
This is the part worth adding, and it costs nothing.
- Say the letter, not just the animal. "That is the hasty hare, H." Two seconds, said once, while they work.
- Ask what happens next in the story, not what colour they are using. They will tell you the whole fable in the wrong order, which is fine, that is what remembering looks like at five.
- Write the word on the page yourself, small, in the corner, while they watch. A child who sees a word being written wants to copy it, and eventually does.
- Put the finished ones up in order. An alphabet appearing round the kitchen over a term is a better display than any chart you can buy, because they made it.
What not to do
Do not correct the colours. I mean it. The moment a child understands that there is a right answer to what colour the swan is, colouring becomes a test, and they will stop choosing and start checking your face.
The purple fox is not a mistake. It is a decision, and decisions are the thing you are trying to encourage.
Where to get the pages
Start with the free ones. Twenty-six colouring posters, one per letter, no charge, and I wrote about how to print them properly last week because I got it wrong three times before I got it right.
If they get used, there is a much larger version. The colouring book that comes with the set is 168 pages, traced from the original paintings rather than drawn as simple outlines, so an older child gets somewhere to put real effort. It is a download, unlocked by a word on the last page of the storybook, and you can print any page as many times as you like.
That comes with the full set, $49.95 during the launch.