Colouring is an activity that offers several benefits to kids and adults. So, what are the benefits of colouring activities? Colouring enhances motor skills, fosters focus, and develops creativity. It’s one of the earliest activities kids get acquitted with and an exciting and cost-efficient way to relax. At a time, colouring was a huge trend.
To teachers and parents, these affordable items needed for colouring require less preparation to use and can be carried along while travelling, such as when the winter break is around the corner. Materials needed for colouring are mostly available at the big retailers, online and discount stores.
Tech-geared guardians can also find an increasing number of drawing applications available on mobile phones.
Colouring has many benefits, and it isn’t just for kids. These benefits include reducing anxiety and stress, improving sleep, vision, and emotional and intellectual awareness by exercising the brain through a challenging yet invigorating exercise.
Also, this activity gets the creative juices active with the aid of colour choices that bring the desired pictures to mind. It’s also a great activity to bid the day a farewell by lying in bed and colouring.
This piece looks into the benefits that colouring offers to kids, teens, and adults. Whether you’re a parent looking for what benefits colouring will offer your kids or what you as an adult stands to gain from colouring, stick around for a while.
Benefits of Colouring for Kids
1. Fine Motor Coordination
Kids who know how to colour are more versed in controlling fine motor movements than their counterparts who don’t engage in the activity. This shows that you’re equipping your kids or teens with the knowledge of fine motor coordination by exposing them to colouring.
This starts by drawing out shapes like scribble, square or circle and colouring the design from the borderlines and improve day after day.
2. Self Esteem
Self-esteem is one of the most important benefits of colouring for kids. Designing a piece of art and colouring the sheets turns out to be a remarkable emotional boost for kids. The feelings kids get from their parents when they present a piece of their creation gives them a positive impression that helps in boosting their self-confidence.
Also, parents who spend time with their kids creating, colouring and sharing this experience benefit from it.
3. Bilateral Coordination
Kids make use of both hands whenever they want to colour any design. This is a crucial way to learn how to hold a pen, a pencil, shoes, also helping them to put on clothes themselves.
4. Colors, Shapes & Counting
The time spent colouring is a good time for kids to learn the names of various colours. While much focus might not be put on this, the kids and teens colouring get gradually familiar with the colours.
However, it’s the duty of the guardian to ensure he spells out the name, so the kids learning the activity get used to the name.
A crayon box is best to practice colouring, and colouring pages are usually full of shapes. It then becomes easy to name shapes. In addition, colouring helps with counting, which can be taught via a simple conversation. The best way to go about this is to ask simple questions like ‘can you draw a green triangle?’ or ‘how many flowers did you colour?’.
If you’re a parent or guardian teaching kids and teens colouring, you don’t need to prepare anything beforehand. You only have to ask some important questions and allow the kids to continue from there.
5. Soothing Exercise
This is one important benefit of colouring for kids and adults. Colouring is a soothing and stress-relieving activity for young ones.
While it works more on adults, it also has the same effects on kids. Colouring offers kids a fantastic way to calm their spirit, and they can physically express their emotions through the mere act of colouring, putting the colour to paper.
It allows kids to show their feelings through designs when they feel they can’t be expressed by word of mouth.
Benefits of Colouring for Teens
1. It is an exciting activity
Colouring is fun to many teenagers as they get to participate with their peers while participating in the activity. Your teen can design, create and share whatever they draw, and it’s most exciting when a large project is around.
Teens love to colour when they have nothing at hand to do. This is even a perfect activity to tie them down instead of engaging in dangerous activities.
Teens like finding an activity they can fit into their daily schedule, put aside and can be done within a few minutes. Even as little as 15 min spent relaxing will help reset their brain, relax their mind and improve their mood.
2. Sleep trigger
When your teens colour before bed, it prepares their body perfectly for sleep and is a remarkable alternative to the annoying blue light of electronics that often contributes to sleepless nights.
3. Stress reliever
Colouring frees their minds from everyday worries and work out your brain. It also replaces your negative thinking patterns mostly caused by social media.
Benefits of Colouring for adults
1. It improves Sleep patterns
Although it is not directly linked to improved sleep quality, colouring helps improve adults sleep patterns. When adults use their colouring books rather than mobile phones at night, it can prevent them from developing night vision.
While you might want to keep yourself busy at night before going to bed, using your phone might cross your mind, but it’s not the best idea. Using your phone when about to sleep emits red lights that reduce the secretion of melatonin (the hormone responsible for the sleep cycle in your system), thus affecting your sleep.
But if you swap your mobile devices for colouring books, you’re not exposing your eyes to blue light, and gradually, you’ll realize an improvement in your sleep quality. Also, you save the dark circles beneath your eyes from wearing.
2. It works the brain
One benefit of colouring for adults is its impact on the brain. As said in a previous paragraph, colouring triggers the part of the medulla oblongata responsible for logic and creativity, assumed to be an effective exercise for the brain. Whenever you colour, both hemispheres of your brain are at work, thus improving your fine motor skills.
The “logic” part of the brain is responsible for choosing the patterns and colours, while the other side caters to the matching and mixing of the colours. Therefore, both areas controlling your vision and fine motor skills are called up. Coordination, vision and motor skills are then improved.
3. It triggers relationships
These days, the only platform where many people get to socialize is on social media. While some adults have many friends on social media, they don’t score well at relating with their neighbours, perhaps not knowing their names.
A simple way to befriend and get social with your neighbours is to try colouring together. It can turn out to be a good conversation starter.
In recent times, adults are now beginning to see colouring as a new hobby facilitating adult colouring books. You can choose to set up a colouring party and invite your friends to socialize and ease your fear. Even if you’re not that good at colouring yet, you can still chat and make friends.
4. Colouring develop the inner artist
Do you still think about when you used to pursue your old hobbies and were just so relentless? As years went by and many things took your time, it’s likely your hobbies were pushed to the side, and you left those activities you once had a passion for.
If colouring happened to be one of your passions, you can rekindle it. Start by getting a colouring book and colour the real patterns and designs that appear like what you used to do when you were young. Exercising your creative skills every day will help enhance them.
However, it is best you buy a colouring book quick so you can rekindle your hobby.
5. It eliminates stress and lessens anxiety
Colouring activities are believed to lessen anxiety and stress. Partaking in such activities help pacify the amygdala (the brain’s fear region) and stimulates the centres of the brain responsible for logic and creativity.
It not only alleviates stress & anxiety but performs as a form of meditation. So whenever you colour, do so excitedly as it will help in improving your mental health.
6. It helps to create your world
When adults start with colouring, they probably do so to maintain it as a hobby and a stress-relief activity, not as a way to show off to people that they excel at it.
Your colouring book is all yours, and no one has the right to judge it, which is the finest aspect of colouring. If you choose, you can colour an elephant red or green: no one will castigate you for it.
The things you design in your colouring book can go to any extent and as wild as your imagination can run. When colouring, you have the freedom to be your true self, colour whatsoever you phantom and express yourself as you wish.
Free colouring pages for all ages can find on our website here.
