Colouring

Sammie started colouring with crayons and we bought all kinds of crayons to encourage her. Using the small, skinny ones that seemed suitable for her small hands or the jumbo ones that don't break easily would often result in only very faint lines that don't really amount to much colouring.

So we got crayola's twistables that are as smooth as lipstick so that she could colour easily. More area of the pictures were coloured this time round but usually in quite a single-toned mess. I thought I shouldn't impede her interest by telling her not to colour out of the lines so I just left her to colour however she wanted. But later I saw her peer colouring very meticulously within the lines (her parents said her grandma would always tell her to colour within the lines) so I thought I should tell Sammie to do likewise. I also tried holding Sammie's hand to teach her to colour within the lines. But Sammie didn't like that and would lose her interest in colouring very quickly.

Then I decided to switch to colour pencils because I don't really like the stickiness of crayons. I coloured with Sammie, leaving her to colour however she wanted while colouring within the lines on my own. She often liked to colour a bit and then would ask me to colour the rest. (she still does this)

Yesterday, she suddenly became so focused and coloured the whole picture on her own! (She chose her own colours and Sen just guided her by suggesting which areas to colour.) Meticulously colouring stroke by stroke, which can be rather tiring because she doesn't know how to shade yet!

Voila! We were so proud of her!

Still wondering how to encourage her to continue colouring on her own because she often still wants the adults (me, sen or her nai nai) to finish up for her even though we remind her that she has done it before... perhaps it's just too tiring for her to use colour pencils... switch back to crayons? but it's a sticky mess.... hmmm....