Everyone’s been spending quite a bit of time at home with the family and it’s normal to get ‘exhausted’ some times. We’ve all been there, sitting on the couch in the middle of the day, wondering what else we can do to keep the kids entertained, when they have to be indoors all day.
This can be particularly difficult if you have a young child or pre-schooler, because they are generally more active and restless, so staying home all day might be particularly hard for them.
One of our favorite things to do at home, with kids, is color. We know, we know, it’s simple. Might even seem too old school, for some, but let us tell you why coloring rocks if you’re working to entertain small children.
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Table of Contents
Coloring is important because it encourages fine motor skills.
Small children need to be constantly developing their motor skills, because they use those in everything they do. Writing, for example, when they’ll be in school. That uses fine motor skills, for example. But chores, reading, using tools – everything requires similar capabilities.
And the easiest way for young kids to develop these is to color in stuff.
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It helps kids focus.
If you have little ones, you know how their minds jump from one place to the next all the time. So, it can be hard to focus their attention all in one place. Coloring pages and printables vary in simplicity. You can start out with an easy picture, one that doesn’t take too much focus, and grow from there.
Coloring is great because it makes kids pay attention to one thing, rather than five a minute, like they usually do. And as you know, concentration is mandatory in every job or life path your kid will follow.
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Helps them hold the pencil better in their hands.
Maybe you’ve noticed this, maybe you haven’t, but a lot of kids have trouble gripping their pen or pencil, even when they’re older. This is because they didn’t learn to properly grip it, when they were small.
A lot of kids who spend a lot of time on their computers and do most of their homework digitally have trouble with pen grip, so this is another thing coloring can help them with.
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Stimulates hand to eye coordination
This is something that we, as adults, tend to take for granted, but its’ really important for small children to work on their hand to eye coordination. It sounds complicated, but it’s easily done by coloring.
It’s both fun and stimulating.
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It boosts creativity
This is perhaps the easiest, most obvious benefit, but we can’t stress the importance of creativity enough, in a young child’s life. The simple act of coloring encourages your child to follow his ideas, his vision, and trust in his own ideas.
It also encourages self-expression, which children don’t get enough of. A lot of entertainment (like games, for example) is passive and doesn’t help children express themselves and find their unique voice.
