Adding colour to children’s lives

Creative Minds

Crayons, colour pencils and colouring books are perhaps the most purchased or gifted items for preschool and kindergarten children. Once the child moves on to higher classes, reading, writing, drawing and painting gain prominence and the simple activity of colouring pictures is seen as childish. Older children are generally discouraged from indulging in it.

That this view is erroneous is now gaining ground as modern-day educationists and psychologists strongly recommend colouring as an activity with multiple benefits for children and adults of all ages. Can colouring be taken up as a hobby? Many doubt that this is possible as it is assumed that colouring involves just filling pages with different colours.

As such, one would lose interest in it after doing a few pages. Again, this is a false belief. Today, the market is flooded with colouring books that contain pictures of varying complexity. There are colouring sheets for various levels available online for free download. So, the question of staying with the basics does not happen. Also, the freedom of choice available with multiple colours kindles creativity and imagination. Given the same colouring page, no two sheets will look the same!

A time out

Studies show that a short break of ten minutes of colouring in between serious studies for examination is comparable to a long period of meditation. Colouring is a good time out for the overloaded and tired brain. Looking at it from this perspective, the activity is a carefree experience because there are no restrictions, no compulsions to conform to and no pressure to complete the exercise in time.

The brain perceives it as a happy activity. The results of two experiments, where subjective and performance measures of mood and mindfulness were included, showed that colouring significantly reduced anxiety and increased mindfulness. Immediately after the experiment, the participants scored significantly lower on implicit fear and significantly higher on selective attention and original ideation. The experiments validated the claim that colouring not only reduced anxiety but also improved mindful attention and creative cognition.

So, it is now the right time to pick up this colourful hobby!