Coloring benefits for kids are many.

Kids love to color. And coloring benefits for kids are plentiful. Colors are attractive to young eyes, and being able to put their own colors on a picture is fun. And coloring is important for many skills and development of children. Plus it’s something they can do all on their own.

Young kids have an increased and outstanding ability to learn and explore new things.  And they like to do it on their own without any help from adults. They believe they’re able to do anything! And this is one of the main reason for them learning so fast with immense confidence.

Some children take more time than others to learn from coloring. But it’s not a competition. Coloring is just another tool for parents and teachers to help children improve their skills and prepare for learning and for life.

There are many skills that kids can learn from coloring:

1. Hand and eye coordination:

Developing the fine motor skills to hold a pencil properly is encouraged through coloring. If you can teach them early, they will know it for life. Start with markers and crayons, which are thicker and larger, and easier to mark on pages. Then, as their hands get stronger and more coordinated, they can move on to pencil crayons and pens and pencils.

Not only do you need to know how to hold a pencil correctly, but controlling it to be able to make the marks on paper that you want requires skill and concentration.

At first, young children might just scribble on the page. But as they develop, their scribbles will become more and more controlled, and they’ll be able to “color inside the lines”. That’s an important milestone, because it’s a prelude to good handwriting, as well as the concentration necessary to focus on learning other academics.

Other skills children will learn include the drawing of people, with greater and greater detail. At first, it might just be a few lines, but then gradually you’ll see a circle and lines. Then you might see a cross with a circle, for a definite head. As children gain more skill, they draw faces, hands and feet, and then clothes on their people.

How to develop this skill?

Encourage your child to color inside the lines. Don’t shame them when they can’t, but gently praise them when they do, even if it’s accidental. Also, give them more and more detailed pictures, as they master coloring skills. The finer the detail, the greater the control they will learn.

2. Learning to be observant and aware:

Drawing and coloring helps them not only with the fine motor skills, but with noticing the environment around them. As they draw, they try to copy other pictures, or things they see. That means they have to first look at what’s around them.

Drawing people, for example, might just start out as a few lines that the child declares is their mommy or best friend. But as they notice that people have heads, hands, feet, eyes, noses and mouths, those details appear in their pictures.

The colors they choose will also change as they notice what’s around them. First, grass might be pink and trees might be purple. But then it might change, as they learn to identify colors, and they’ll match green to grass, and red to cars, and blue to sky.

Their pictures will become reflections of what’s going on around them and inside their minds.

How to develop these skills?

Playing games like guess-what-I’m-drawing or copying and tracing pictures will also help develop fine motor skills.  You can ask your child to put in more details on their pictures when they are drawing them, and provide lots and lots of paper for their creativity. It takes lots of practice to develop these skills!

3. Color awareness:

Learning colors is a major developmental milestone for children. It helps them learn numeracy and pre-literacy skills! And it helps them connect the abstract with the concrete, putting on paper in a picture the real world around them.

When a child learns their colors, and can identify them, they immediately begin to sort and classify. Those are important skills for math, because they help us to recognize patterns. And patterns are the precursor to problem solving skills.

As a child learns to differentiate between the colors and things that are various colors, they are learning to notice differences. And being able to notice differences and see patterns helps with reading. Children have to learn how to notice small differences to be able to tell one letter from another, and one word from the next in order to learn how to read.

How to develop this skill?

Play guessing games like “I Spy” around you or “Look-and-find” in books. You can also have them color pictures that have “hidden” things in them, and challenge them to find the smaller pictures within the picture. And you can do workbooks that have “What’s the difference?” or “Match the same” activities in them, to help them learn to look for similarities and differences.

4. Improved focus:

Coloring is great for learning to concentrate and focus. In order to color, children have to sit or lay down, and keep their bodies still, to have the control. The more detailed the picture, the more the child has to concentrate.

Since coloring is fun (especially when you’re coloring with someone, like mom or a sibling!), this is a great activity to use as an introduction to school readiness. For preschool children, having them spend time coloring or doing other sit-down art activities not only helps them develop school skills like handling a pencil or scissors, but the gross motor skills like sitting on a chair, sitting still for a longer period of time, and focusing on an activity.

How to develop this skill?

Sit down with your child to color and do paper crafts. Your modeling and gentle encouragement will build their ability to sit and focus. Reading stories to them also helps develop this skill.

5. Creativity and imaginative thinking:

Everyone is born with the ability to be creative. Coloring can help develop a child’s creative thinking even more. Those black line pictures allow children to take a real-world object and turn it into something magical. And interacting with storybook or TV show characters helps them to practice storytelling and creative thinking.

Their imaginations can take off when you give them a blank piece of paper. Whether you use a drawing and coloring prompt or just let them have fun drawing and coloring pictures, you’ll see their imaginations soar with creative ideas.

How to develop this skill?

Reward creative ideas by making a big deal over them. Put them on your fridge, or in a scrapbook. The best ones you could even label with their name and date, and then frame for their bedroom walls. Offer lots of coloring pictures and blank paper. And make sure their markers, crayons and pencil crayons are usable. There’s nothing like a new package of markers to get a child’s creative juices flowing!

6. Self-expression and personality development:

Children are still learning to communicate and express themselves. Sometimes those big emotions are hard to deal with. And they are still figuring out who and what they want to be! Coloring is a great way to explore all of those ideas.

With coloring, children can show their feelings in a more appropriate way. Maybe they are feeling frustrated or upset? A good scribbling session can release some of those angry feelings. They might even be able to show you how they’re feeling easier by drawing a picture rather than trying to talk.

Kids can also explore different ways of expressing themselves through color choices. Our society tends to pressure girls into wanting pink and sparkles, and boys to want blue. But with coloring, boys can play with pink and purple colors, and girls can choose blue and greens, without censorship. It’s just coloring!

How to develop this skill?

Allow children to explore with coloring. Let them use untraditional colors on things, whether its a purple sun or a rainbow colored rock. And offer coloring prompts to encourage them to think about themselves in new ways. For example, ask them to draw themselves as an animal or fantasy character like a mermaid. Let them experiment with different colors and coloring methods, and don’t react negatively to their self-expression.

7. Therapy:

Coloring can be a relaxing, soothing activity. It can also be used to help express those big emotions kids (and adults!) might struggle with releasing appropriately.  Art therapy is a recognized therapy practice, and today, you can get art therapy coloring, for kids and for adults. Some of them might be meditation-related, some might just be detailed mandelas or patterns, and some might be relaxing themes.

While this use of coloring isn’t exactly a developmental skill, you can use it to teach relaxation and stress relieving techniques. Since coloring is repetitive activity, it can become almost hypnotic, helping a child to block out anxiety or stress. And since coloring requires you to stay still for best effect, it can help ground a child who has elevated emotions, and calm their bodies and minds.

You can also use coloring to relax with other relaxation aids. Turn on some classical or instrumental music, or try a nature track while you’re coloring. Or offer coloring and an audio book to distract and calm.

Coloring can be done at almost any age.

Coloring is one of those universal activities. As soon as a child can hold a crayon in their hand and make a mark on paper, they can color. And even the elderly can color, as long as they can still hold a marker or crayon. Playing with the colors, creating art out of black lines and blank paper, and expressing oneself creatively all help coloring remain a favorite of young and old alike. And with good reason! There are so many benefits to coloring.

So go find yourself a coloring book and some crayons, and start coloring.

Do you enjoy coloring? When was the last time you colored pictures with your kids? 

For more tips on helping your children develop, read Activities that can help healthy brain development in children