Build Fine Motor Skills - Early Childhood Coloring Activity

Early childhood, start from 1 to 3 years old is called as the golden age which their cognitive, emotion, and social development improve in the fastest and greatest ways. In this period, the kids must be taught a lot of things in order to build their skills up especially for the motor skills. Motor skills are the ways of the body to improve the performance to be more complex, and it will continue for the entire life. The motor skills is divided into two classifications, there are Gross motor skills and fine motor skills.

Gross motor skills are the skills that require the large muscles movements, involve the entire body to engage the physical activities such as running, swimming, kicking, etc. Fine motor skills are those which require the small muscles, the coordination between the body muscles and the eyes. It can be trained in many ways such as moving an object, doodling, set the blocks, writing, etc. And with the combination of both skills, the children developments will be increase maximally. 

One of the fun ways to stimulate the fine motor skills is coloring activity.

Who doesn’t like coloring? Children really love this activity, they can set their imaginations free through the colors. They will be trained to distinguish colors, mix them together and create the new one. And soon or later, these abilities will help them to make many art creations along to their developmental age.

Now i will give an example of the coloring activity. Here i got my own nephew as the ‘experimental’ object. His name is Rafa, and he is 19 months old. He is a very active toddler and has a lot of energy. And whenever the energy burst, he will be doing many naughty activities which somehow will disturb us in some ways. That’s why as the adults we must know how to control it and channel the energy to the worthwhile activity.

Since the first time Rafa saw the painting colors, he’s showing a great enthusiasm and couldn’t wait any longer to open all of the painting’s caps (I had to holds both of his hand and asked him to wait). I gave him a pretty big clam shell rather than paper or canvas, because i want him to learn about sea creature and its texture as well (killing two birds with one stone, lol). In the first minutes he was so focus and can concentrate on the shell pretty well, but it happened briefly. I mean what do we expect from the kid around this age who got a really short time of concentration? My nephew hasn’t turn 2 years old yet wich means his maximum time of concentration is 2 minutes, after he reach the maximum time, he will start to make a mess. That’s NORMAL, i warn you to keep this in your mind. I’ve ever been asked by my first grade student’s parent about his child condition. He asked me what his child usually do in the school? Can he get focus on the materials? he said that his child like to play around rather than study, and he has a really short time of concentration. For all the parents, please, i'm begging you, never push your kids to get focus in long time, what will happen by doing this is the kids will get stressed out! Even us, as the adults just can get focus for 30 minutes. We cannot increase their time of concentration, what we can do just make their activities more fun, so we can increase their interest level, just it!

Back to our coloring activity, as i said before after a couple of minute Rafa started to make a mess. Once again, i'm telling you to not get mad. This is one of the learning process too, Rafa didn’t make a mess for no reason, he even told me that he was making a mouse and a horse on the floor. Isn’t it amaze you? it looks like a random painting in our eyes, but it has a shape in the kid’s eyes. 

  

Rafa was so focus on painting the shell

but, After a couple of minute ........

Here they are, Rafa's mouse and horse on the floor

Let them destroy the room, make a mess, and get wild. Cleaning is not a big deal! We can clean it up in no time though, but what we have taught them will remain for the rest of their life. As the parents, you must be patient in teaching the kids, let them explore everything they want. As long as we doing this, i’m so sure in the future it will be much easier for them to express their feelings and their ideas. Teach and support them kind heartedly, avoid the forbidden words especially the word ‘don’t’, and be wise parents who understand what your children need.

In the end, this is what i got. A beautiful clam shell that you cannot find anywhere :)