Colour By Numbers

In life there's lots of little things in life that when we think about them reveal quite a lot.

That was the case of my children using a simple, little thing called "Colour By Numbers". Over the past few years I have gotten my children a great many colouring books. Many themes, different styles of drawings and some even contained a couple of colour-by-number activities. However, this book was purely colour-by-numbers... page after page after page.

Telling my children exactly what colours to use where.

My children dutifully colour according to instructions. Morning, noon and night. Day after day after day. My children have become avid colourers. As soon as they wake up they're colouring. As soon as they arrive home from school they're colouring. When it's bedtime you literally have to beg them to stop colouring even for their favorite story time.

Yes, they have always loved colouring but I have NEVER seen my children quite so absorbed in colouring. It's even reached a point where they have graduated from displaying their pieces just in their bedroom to now all over my fridge and if you know me I don't ever have anything stuck on my fridge!

However, what's the point of such a simple thing as this?

Well as I said it's the small things in life that actually reveal quite a lot. My theory regarding colour-by-numbers is this...

• It's simple. The child is guided as to what colours to use.
• The results are positive. The pictures that are produced look more realistic than the ones produced when the child has to choose the colours themselves. It's exciting to the child that their pieces can look so GREAT!

Can a teacher learn from this? I believe so. I don't advocate spoon-feeding the child. Brain-power must be employed by the child for development to occur. However, what's the harm in making the progress as painless as possible? It might be that we want the child to jump a tall wall that is currently beyond his physical abilities when we will get more progress by providing steps for the child to climb gradually.

Make learning simple.

And as the child climbs each step that positive result would make him want to climb more and more and more until he finally gets over the wall.

Do you think that I'm reading too much into a simple colour-by-numbers book? But don't under-estimate the fact that it really is through the little things in life that we make sense of the big picture. Let me know your thoughts on the matter.