Rita writes about the different ways she uses Activity Village's colouring pages in her household in this guest blog post.
Fun Ideas for Using Colouring Pages
By Rita
My kids love colouring. I can print them out a page, put on an audiobook, and they’re good for an hour or more. In the early days, I would do a random internet search for “fairy colouring page printable” (I have four girls. We get through a LOT of fairy colouring pages). One day, the search led me to Activity Village, and now, I don’t even bother with searching. I go straight to Activity Village, where I know that I will find a page that my kids will get excited about (fairies and many more besides). But with a little out-of-the-box thinking, some of the colouring pages morph into crafty-arty-educational super resources. Here are a couple of the ways that we use the Activity Village colouring pages in our household:
We love this cute little dragon!
Tracing
Activity Village have a collection of colouring pages which have simple bold lines. They suggest they are good for younger kids to colour. Which they are. But I print them out as A5 pages, laminate them, and then give them to my kids as tracing pages.
The nice clean lines of these pictures are perfect for tracing.
We use tracing paper with Blu Tack to hold it still (because slippy-slidey tracing is just no fun at all), but you could easily hand them a whiteboard marker and get them to do it directly on the page, or use baking paper or thin drawing paper. Tracing is a great way to build the fine motor skills that are oh-so-important for writing, and is so much more fun than worksheets.
They’d never know they are actually learning!
My 6 year old daughter loves colouring the traced images in and sticking them on her bedroom window to let the light shine through.
Letting the light shine through!
On-the-Go Tins
I love having screen-free activities in my handbag for my kids to do if we are out and about. I also love little tins. The same colouring pages that I use for tracing also reduce really well, because of their simple lines. So I print them out with 9 or 16 to a page, cut them up, and put them in a tin with some pencils or crayons. Behold – colouring tins!
A tin of mini colouring pgaes, all neatly packaged, ready for fun
Now, I admit, this is actually still using them for colouring. But in my defence, they are mini colouring pages. And anything mini has to be a winner, right? The tin that I use came from a stationery supply store, but you could use a mint tin, which are readily available, or any cute little tin that you have lying around. (Tell me I’m not the only one with cute tins lying around because I couldn’t bear to throw them out).
Other Ideas
These pages have so much potential. Because of their large spaces they would be great for a collage activity, or to colour in with paint. You could print out multiple copies on pretty paper and layer parts for a 3D card. So many possibilities! I have inspired myself – off to get crafting…
You know the elephant my daughter was tracing? Look what she did with it!
This is a guest post from Rita. Rita is a home educating mother of four girls, aged 10, 8, 6, and 2. She blogs at Chronicles of a Disorganised Homeschooler, where she shares her attempts to at least pretend to be organised enough to manage life, and the fun that she and her family has along the way.
You can find a list of all our guest posts, here.
