Coloring books – we all taken them for granted – but have you ever stopped to think about how they first came about?
Coloring books first come out in the United States as part of the “democratization of art” process, inspired by a convention which included a series of lectures by a UK artist called Joshua Reynolds and the works of Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi.
At this convention, many educators concluded that all students, regardless of their background, stood to benefit from art education as “a means of enhancing their conceptual understanding of the tangible, developing their cognitive abilities and improving skills that would be useful in finding a profession, as well as for the children’s spiritual edification.”
The McLoughlin Brothers are credited as the inventors of the coloring book, when, in the early 1880s they produced The Little Folks’ Painting Book, in collaboration with English children’s book illustrator and writer Kate Greenaway. They continued to publish coloring books until the 1920s, when the McLoughlin Brothers became part of the Milton Bradley Company. Another coloring book pioneer was Richard F. Outcault. He authored Buster’s Paint Book in 1907, featuring the character of Buster Brown, which he had invented in 1902.
In the early 1900s anew trend then began to emerge and coloring books were circulated to advertise a wide variety of products, including coffee, chocolate and even pianos.
As a mainly non-verbal medium, coloring books have seen wide application in education. Coloring books are said to help to motivate students’ understanding of concepts that they would otherwise be uninterested in. Since the 1980s, several publishers have also produced educational coloring books intended for studying graduate-level topics such as anatomy and physiology, where color-coding of many detailed medical diagrams are used as a learning aid.
Coloring books have also been known to have health and therapeutic uses. For instance, one nurse, trying to limit the trauma of child surgery, described in an academic publication how the use of a coloring book “might help [the child] to understand what was going to happen to him.” According to writer Carolyn Harris, author of ‘Tonsil Season’, featured in The American Journal of Nursing, a coloring book proved useful in helping children deal with hospitalization and tonsillectomy.
Coloring books are often used in rehabilitation of accident victims to aid recovery of hand-eye coordination too and they are used with autistic children both for entertainment and for their soothing affect. It should be noted however that some autistic children will react strongly to bright colors, and that the use of paint and paint-brushes can lead to accidents that may greatly upset the child. For this reason a software based coloring book may be a better option.
There are now many websites that offer free, printable coloring pages of everything from Princesses to Pokemon. These individual pages can easily be printed off and stapled into a personalised coloring book. For example at sites like Spiderman Coloring you’ll find many Spiderman colouring pages while little girls would perhaps enjoy the Hello Kitty coloring sheets at Hello Kitty Coloring Pages.
Coloring books teach children fine motor skills, early math skills, early reading skills and the basics of art theory. By observing a child coloring one can also determine that child’s handwriting readiness. Things to look for to help determine a child’s handwriting readiness are attention, crayon grip, posture/strength/endurance, and the use of the helping hand (the hand that holds the paper).”
Not only are coloring books fun, but they can also be used to help those with communication disabilities and speech-language disorders.
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