Doodling with your children
Parents and caregivers can promote drawing and coloring as a way to improve physical, social, emotional and cognitive development-and to have a lot of fun along the way too. Here are some suggestions:
The simple acts of drawing and coloring are literally childs’ play, however, they both play an important role in a child’s physical, emotional and cognitive development. Like no other activity, drawing and coloring allows young children to express emotions, experience autonomy and build their confidence.
1.Supply children with nontoxic drawing materials, blank sheets of paper and coloring pages.
2. Model drawing. Show children that you like to draw and color too - make designs but do not show your children what they should draw.
3. Encourage all drawing and coloring efforts by talking about the beautiful colors, the lines and shapes the child has made.
4.Rather than enquire, “What is it?,” say “Tell me about your drawing”.Asking “What is that?” suggests to the child that s/he may have failed to depict what they intended.
5.Talk about things such as thin, thick, wide, narrow, dark, edge, light, shape, contour, etc.
6. Display their art on the kitchen fridge, in their room and in places where visitors to your home will see them. Point their artwork out to visitors – the praise they will receive will make them feel proud of their work and will encourage them to draw and color again.
7.Let children choose the subject of their drawings and the types of coloring sheets they would like to color. For example little girls may enjoy coloring images of Barbie and at sites like Barbie Coloring Pages you’ll find the best Barbie party invitations
Little boys on the other hand tend to prefer images of cars, trucks and machinery – however, favorite characters such as those from Disney movies are also hits with little boys.
8. Crayons pose a choking hazard – so always supervise younger children while they draw and color.
Tags: art, children, coloring, crayons, drawing, educate
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 2:50 pm and is filed under pregnancy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.