Is Coloring Art?

Yes. Next!

Just kidding. Okay, coloring a picture that is already drawn does not require creating shapes, or lines, or developing an idea from scratch. However, it's one of the quickest and easiest ways to foster a right-brain shift that I know of. Meaning, it can kick you into a peaceful, non-verbal, quiet sense of well-being as you interact with something that is purely visual.

I often draw things for kids to color. When my daughter was very small I would draw something for her, and she would basically obliterate it with a crayon as she went over it again and again - sometimes following the lines, sometimes coloring it in.

Online there are pretty much infinite things for kids to color - if your child has a favorite character, I guarantee there's a coloring page out there with that character on it. Just Google Dora or Arthur or Sesame Street or whatever and bingo.

Also, the newspaper funnies are a great thing to color. It's like having a coloring book delivered to your house every morning.

And again - if you don't want to drown in coloring pages, you can make an outline of something on a small white board and let kids color it in. There are even white board marker-friendly placemats that kids can color while they eat their cereal. My son has the Solar System.

So don't underestimate the value of interacting with a drawing by coloring it - many times a child is following the lines, getting to know the shapes, and encoding things in muscle memory. In full color!