Picture a rainy Saturday. Your five-year-old has been bent over a picture for twenty minutes, tongue poking out, deciding whether the elephant should be purple. Then someone at the table says it, kindly enough: "It's just busywork, though, isn't it?" Doubting the benefits of coloring for kids sounds like common sense. The doubt actually has a birthday, 1947, and an author.
The short answer: Coloring won't teach reading or math on its own, and it shouldn't replace free drawing. But "busywork" undersells it. Finishing a picture practices hand control, focus and calm, and the case against coloring books is thinner than its reputation.
The myth, stated fairly
The fair version goes like this. A coloring book hands a child someone else's picture, so the child makes no real decisions. Filling in shapes keeps small hands busy, which is handy for the adult, but the child learns little and may lose some of their own ideas along the way. Better, the argument goes, to give them a blank sheet.
That is a serious position, held by serious people. It is also only half right, and the story of where it came from shows which half.
Where the busywork idea came from: a professor and a bird
In 1947 Viktor Lowenfeld, an Austrian-born art educator teaching at Penn State, published Creative and Mental Growth. It became one of the most influential textbooks in art education, and many teacher-training programs used it.
On coloring books, Lowenfeld was blunt: "There is general agreement that coloring books too are detrimental to children's creative expression."
To show why, his book included an illustration about birds. Asked to draw a bird on a blank sheet, children drew all kinds of inventive birds. After coloring workbook birds drawn as a simple curved V, many of them began drawing their own birds the same flat way.
He also doubted that coloring in workbook balloons and kites taught children to count or read, and he suggested, a little wickedly, that one reason teachers used workbooks was to get a rest. That is the busywork charge in its original form, and it has been repeated ever since.
The benefits, and what the evidence actually says
Here is the surprise: the famous claim rested on an argument and an illustration, not on a controlled experiment. Forty-four years later, a researcher was still looking for the evidence behind it. In 1991 I. L. King published a paper in Studies in Art Education with a telling title: "In Search of Lowenfeld's Proof That Coloring Books Are Harmful to Children."
When a 2016 public radio report revisited the debate, the case against coloring books still rested on Lowenfeld's reasoning and on the views of art educators, not on experiments with children.
The research on coloring's upside is real, but narrower than many articles suggest. In a 2005 study in the journal Art Therapy, Curry and Kasser gave 84 college students a short task designed to make them anxious, then had them color a mandala, a plaid pattern, or a blank sheet of paper. Anxiety fell about equally for the mandala and plaid groups, and by more than it did for free coloring on blank paper. Structured coloring, in other words, was calming.
Two honest cautions. Those were college students, not five-year-olds, and one study is not a law of nature. Anyone who promises that coloring will boost a child's brain by some percentage is going well past what the research shows.
What coloring can reasonably offer
The useful case for coloring is smaller than the exaggerated one, and stronger for being smaller.
It gives the hand practice. Holding a crayon, changing pressure and steering around an edge all ask for small, controlled movements. Those are not handwriting lessons, but they exercise some of the same hand control children later use with a pencil.
It gives attention somewhere to land. A picture has a visible task and a visible finish. For a child who enjoys it, staying with one page is practice in staying with one thing.
It can be absorbing. Adults in the Curry and Kasser study became less anxious after structured coloring; that study does not prove the same effect in young children, but it helps explain why many people experience repetitive coloring as settling.
It still leaves choices. The outline may be given, but the purple elephant, green sky and order of the page belong to the child.
Most importantly, it can start something beyond the page. A picture can lead to a question, a story, a conversation or a blank sheet beside it. That is where coloring stops being "keeping busy" and starts becoming material for imagination.
Where the critics are right
Lowenfeld's worry about copying deserves respect. A child who only ever colors other people's outlines misses the harder, braver work of putting their own marks on an empty page. And coloring a picture of five kites does not, by itself, teach anyone to count to five.
So the answer isn't coloring or drawing. It's coloring and drawing, with talk in between.
A better way to color: story, talk, then draw
- Start with a story. A picture that means something holds a child longer than one that just fills time. Tell the story first, then hand over the crayons. Our Ganesh Chaturthi story for kids and the Night Before Christmas poem are both written to be read aloud.
- Talk about the picture, not the neatness. "Why do you think he's smiling?" beats "stay inside the lines."
- Leave the colors alone. A purple elephant is a decision, not a mistake.
- Keep a blank sheet beside the book. When the picture is finished, ask them to draw what happens next. That is the direct answer to Lowenfeld's bird.
- Choose pictures they can finish. Thick lines and big shapes suit ages 4 to 8; finer detail suits older children. And protect the page underneath: our guide to markers that don't bleed through has the fixes.
The strongest coloring pages give a child something to ask, tell or draw beyond the outline. One book built around that principle is our Ganesha coloring book for ages 4 to 8. It opens with the story of Ganesh Chaturthi in twelve pictures, from Parvati's clay boy to the farewell at the sea, and every page carries a short lesson line to talk about, such as what Ganesha's big ears are for. The last three pages hand the pencil back: finish a half-drawn Bappa (the family name for Ganesha), copy a murti, or statue, square by square, then design your own.
Sources
- Lowenfeld, V. (1947). Creative and Mental Growth. Macmillan. Full text.
- King, I. L. (1991). "In Search of Lowenfeld's Proof That Coloring Books Are Harmful to Children." Studies in Art Education, 33(1), 36–42. Abstract.
- Curry, N. A., & Kasser, T. (2005). "Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety?" Art Therapy, 22(2), 81–85. ERIC record.
- The People vs. Coloring Books: The Verdict Is In, WGBH, 2016.
Frequently asked questions
Is coloring good for kids?
Yes, in modest and useful ways. It builds the hand control needed for writing, stretches attention, and gives children a calm, quiet activity to share with a grown-up. It works best alongside free drawing, not instead of it.
Do coloring books kill creativity?
The idea comes from Viktor Lowenfeld's 1947 textbook, which rested on argument rather than controlled experiments. Pairing coloring with free drawing, and letting children choose their own colors, answers the concern.
At what age should kids start coloring?
Many children start scribbling with chunky crayons at around two. Simple pictures with thick lines and big shapes usually work from about three.
Is coloring good for handwriting?
It can give children practice with some of the hand control used in early writing. Coloring uses a similar grip and the same small hand muscles, so it is a playful way to build some of the control children draw on before they write letters.