While there isn't often a hard and fast rule, coloring pages are often looked at as "busy work" or as having no place in a child led classroom, with beliefs about the potential for negative impact on children's creativity and discovery. Why would a child want to learn to draw independently if we have pages already made with all of the pictures they could want to draw! Surprisingly, there's very limited research on coloring pages and their impact on creativity... or anything else for young children.

References:

Creative and Mental Growth (Third Edition) Viktor Lowenfeld

Nurturing Creativity: An Essential Mindset for Young Children’s Learning by Rebecca Isbell and Sonia Akiko Yoshizawa

Coloring-Book-Type Experiences and Children's Divergent Pictorial Production* N. ASHLEY RANDALL, JR.; THOMAS W. DRAPER

Music from:

The Reggio Emilia approach values the idea of the teacher as researcher; program director Alexandra Dutton, of Old Firehouse School, has nearly 20 years of experience supporting educators in their role as researcher of their own group of children.

Find Fireside Chats on the Young Mind wherever you get your podcasts!