How to encourage a 2 year old toddler to complete colouring a sketch?
The baby is 2 years 3 months old. She is utterly interested in drawing. She has now been put in a playschool where I was told that she will be given homework regarding colouring pictures.
I have noticed that the colouring books meant for small children contain giant drawings. Most of them have big square, cirle, and other shapes etc. Other do have some animals but they are also very big.
My opinion is that if someone asks me to colour a big rectangle, I won't be interested because:
It is very big so it will take a long time to colour it.
It is does not represent anything so it is not interesting.
Now considering the above logic, I have brought the colouring books meant for bigger children for my toddler. These books have smaller pictures of animals, birds, and people.
I show the parts of body of animals, birds, and people to the child and then ask her to colour the specific part.
She seems to enjoy this. She enjoys colouring horns, eyes, feet, hands, ears. The problem starts when I ask her to colour the torso. She loses interest. I can guess that the reason is that the torso is big whether it is of an animal or a human. It is big.
I have tried the following to encourage her:
I have given her oil pastels instead of wax crayons because of the smoothness and bright shades they have. She loves them.
I tell her that I will colour x part of the body, and then ask her which part would you colour? She responds happily to this too.
But these steps do not work when colouring the torso. Also, according to the second point listed above, I colour half of the sketch and she colours the other half.
Right now, she hasn't been given any homework but when she does get the homework I am not sure if the second step I follow will be considered cheating(?) I am also not sure if this is proper way to encourage her!
Also, her school books have big rectangles to colour. I don't know how to force her to colour that giant rectangle, and animals which have giant torsos, when I myself think that colouring that giant rectangle/area is wastage of time. I never do it myself even though I am very much interested in Arts!
How to encourage a 2 year old toddler to complete colouring a sketch?
(5)5 Comments
Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best
To piggyback on @Adam_Davis ' answer: You can have your daughter employ a strategy called "divide and conquer".
The problem, "Large volume of empty space to color", can be separated into numerous smaller areas. Giving torso'ed character t-shirts and other clothing items is a good way to do this. Another could be to simply draw within drawings.
Once the space is divided enjoyably, it should be far easier to color the remainder of the picture.
One thing to keep in mind, in no application I know of will there be a need to do a total 100% fill. Intentful use of whitespace is a hallmark of professional design, and your daughter would do well to practice it now.
If the issue is one of interest, make the torso interesting, and at the same time encourage her to modify the drawings.
"I wonder. If this dinosaur had a shirt, what kind of shirt would it be?"
Maybe add stripes, or circles, squares, and rectangles to the "shirt".
What I would do is give her abundant colors and papers with and without outlines to draw on, and let (and encourage, and support) her to do the things she naturally wants to do. Allow genius to follow its own path. Forcing and requiring things, and even giving too strong an approval message, gets a child to react to your interference. Genius blossoms when it grows freely and naturally in rich and varied soil provided abundantly and unconditionally by you. Protect her from outside demands from foolish preschool teachers.
It sounds like your child is possibly above average in this particular area.
Give her opportunity to explore drawing from blank pages to tracing leaves in autumn... but don't require results, there is no grade or value in evaluation at this age. Especially since she might loath drawing by the age of 4 and be into climbing.
So to answer your question, the best way to encourage them to complete a colouring sketch: don't, let them find their own encouragement.
And if the "teacher" is using a rubric-based curriculum for some crazy reason, show them your daughter's "preferred artwork" efforts as exemplary results of the desired achievement.
I think that a toddler is way too young for mandatory homework, so the first thing is not to worry about getting it done or doing it "right". It turns something that should be a pleasure into a chore, and will guarantee that she won't want anything to do with art in later years.
So I think you should treat this "homework" as a fun optional extra. Doing it together as you have been doing is a great idea. Don't worry about "cheating". The objective is to get her to practise skills, not to get 10/10 in the test. And if she gets tired of it half way through, let it go. Don't sweat it.
Terms of Use Privacy policy Contact About Cancellation policy © freshhoot.com2025 All Rights reserved.