Come and Color

The above writing is Emma's end of year penmanship.  Her penmanship has been a concern of mine all year.  I constantly had her rewrite her homework but she always came home with this chicken scratch on her school work.  I don't know how her teacher graded her work. Call me crazy but I would like for all of my kids to be able to write legibly.

Larissa complains of getting tired when writing and Emma obviously needs some fine motor skill improvements so enter the coloring books. Not typical children's books but very fine coloring books.

Before we started I explained that this is not a race, to color these correctly will take a long time. Take your time. They are also not required to work on it at any specific time, it is for enjoyment.

I have been working on one as well.  I find that when I sit down to color some kids will join me.

Anthony picked the most intricate one and is using colored pencils.

We started on them yesterday.  Last night Michelle went to color and came to me with her finished project telling me that she finished hers first.  Well, she started out in the fine detail then used the pencils and colored over the rest of the fine detail to finish first.  I reminded her that it was not a race and if it had been she cheated.  She is not allowed to start another one until everyone finishes their first one.

Today we had friends over after church......

Kids would come and go from playing and the pool, they were attracted to the coloring.

Little one wanted to join.

Larissa didn't want to go to bed, she wanted to color.

I sent her to bed telling her that she could continue to color tomorrow and I had to promise that I wouldn't color without her tonight.

Funny, I have found that I love coloring these pages.  It is so relaxing and I find that the kids are calmer when they color.  What about you, have you colored lately?