Fun with Colours for Kids

The first time I handed over water paints to my little one, I made him sit on the floor, away from the carpets and was expecting him to show me some ‘Picasso’ magic on the sheets. And that’s the mistake I did. I just ruined fun time for him. In the early ages drawing and painting is basically an unstructured play and learning. Yes, it’s supposed to be messy, time consuming and requires a lot of patience. But this experience of learning can turn out to be so enjoyable.

The love for drawing and colours come naturally to most of the kids. They love to hold the crayons, pencils and usually their first masterpieces are the walls of our homes. This activity encourages the imaginative skills and helps the kids to express freely. At one such instance, my son coloured the sun black; upon asking he just said- “I’m missing Papa” (my husband was not around) and he was just feeling low. It is a way of expressing their feelings and harnessing their imagination and creativity.

Start with helping your child in holding the crayons/pencil colours using their fingers and hands. Just make sure they don’t have sharp edges that could harm and injure the kid. And also be there while they are experiencing with them, they have the tendency to put everything in their mouth which might be infectious. Look out for the non toxic crayons available in the stores.

The initial learning’s revolve around teaching them how to make strokes with different kinds of colours. Tell them to make straight lines, circular strokes from different colours in blank sheets of paper. By regular practice, they will start learning to make patterns of different shapes and slowly their erratic crayon activity will diminish. Try involving few games while making them colour, put on a bit of music as kids gets bored with monotonous activities.

Introduce things they see around, trees and houses or animals which they can relate and will help them choose the colours accordingly. Don’t worry if they have trouble being inside the lines. What’s more important is that they can identify colours with the objects given- like plants are green and the sun is always yellow.

There are lot of picture colouring books available in the stores. Grab a few with concepts like flowers, transport, animals etc. Make it fun instead of a mundane routine task which has to happen at a certain time and day. When they get older, introduce water paints and brushes. Beware as it will get messier but a lot more fun. Avoid any sort of distractions while they are exploring the colours especially television.

The most basic point while you try to teach drawing and painting to your child is, you should teach him to observe the world around them and then express them in colours. Put up their drawings on the walls and be appreciative of their cute little creations. Happy doodling!