Why all the colouring???

[Changemorethanachameleon]

Sat here doing the weekend homework with my year 2 ds. And he's bored and so am I.

French - match the fruits to the words, and colour them in in French, and the pictures are really big, it's taken him 10 minutes to colour in one fruit and there are 5 of them.

Maths - colour in the odd blue and the even red, colour in an even number of hats, and an odd number of bugs

English - colour in the picture of the traditional story that matches the description.

All this colouring that takes so much time, and he knows the answers straight off, just makes all the tasks so laborious.

What is the purpose of all this colouring?

The maths one sounds OK - the other two are just time-fillers.

I teach a children's group at church on Sunday mornings. I am absolutely forbidden by the 7-9 year old boys to provide any activity that requires colouring in. It bores them to tears.

(Although, when we had a cake stall after the service one week, they were the first to offer to make a nice, colourful sign for it )

colouring = practice (and monitor) fine motor skills. but agree, that sonds a lot.

Wince-making yellow background but good content:

mikeschmoker.com/crayola-curriculum.html

''What is actually going on during these early-grade reading periods? A number of things, but the activity that overwhelmed all legitimate literacy activities may surprise you. Students were not reading, they weren't writing about what they had read, they weren't learning the alphabet or its corresponding sounds; they weren't learning words or sentences or how to read short texts.

They were coloring. Coloring on a scale unimaginable to us before these classroom tours. The crayons were ever-present. Sometimes, students were cutting or building things out of paper (which they had colored) or just talking quietly while sitting at "activity centers" that were presumably for the purpose of promoting reading and writing skills. These centers, too, were ubiquitous, and a great source of pride to many teachers and administrators. They were great for classroom management?and patently, tragically counterproductive.''

Does he have poor fine motor skills? If not they are pretty pointless time consuming but low level learning.

The maths could be achieved by drawing a circle around all the even numbers and a cross on the odds.

My Year 11s often ask why they can't just do colouring. I gave them a coluring in French sheet for the last half hour of the last lesson before Xmas and they all sat in silence happily colouring away - big 6ft lads chuffed because they 'stayed in the lines'. You're never too old!

Take your point about homework though - but it's a safe assumption that most families have a packet of crayons or colouring pencils lying around. If I give anything more creative than that, I get 'but we didn't have any glue/scissors/paper/felts/Internet/printer at home'.

Most of my class don't have crayons or even pencils at home

Very interesting article maverick. I'll be showing that to my ds' school - selective academic independent!

No he has no problem with motor skills. Only disadvantage is he's a perfectionist, so I've tried to teach him to do shading, but he says that's not proper colouring so is doing it with precision - never goes over the lines.

Only time he's ever missed reward time at school, was because he had to finish his colouring. I spoke to the school at the time about this, and the Head agreed it was inappropriate that he was penalised for colouring.

Still sat with him colouring!!! [yawn]

I'd have used paint for the fruit. Crossed out for hats and bugs. One of the things I often have to teach my Y6 is the difference between a sketch, a diagram and that if the objective is to identify specific numbers in maths, it isn't an art lesson.
Is all the homework set by the same person? It might be worth mentioning that there was a lack of variety.

English and maths same teacher
French different teacher.

Problem is instructions state use crayons to colour these in. DS won't allow me to deviate from the written instructions, as rules are there to be followed, and although I don't believe he would be told off by his teachers, that's what he fears happens if he doesn't follow the rules.

Hi Changemorethanchameleon:

I suppose the question I have is this what you normally have to do weekend after weekend or is this unusual?

I also thought the Mike Schmoker article maverick posted was very interesting.

We had a lot of colouring homework in KS1 maths - lots of colour in pattern work (every third segment of caterpillar, use five colours and make different patterns across these twenty trains with 15 cars each, etc...). My personal feeling was that this fulfilled the school's requirement of one maths homework from the school a week, without involving the teacher in any marking.

I'd encourage your school to go over to on-line learning tools like my maths (where the programme marks the homework anyway and reports to teacher) or like Education City (where the child & parent can see how things are going as they play a game). If used effectively - these take less time (from the sound of it) but really focus in on a whatever particular aspect of learning you'd like to review and reflect upon.

With languages -at some point you do have to learn colours and I can see how this might include colouring in things like fruit (so you're learning fruit names and reviewing colours simultaneously) - but agree some variety in the type of homework would be preferable.

I used to grab the educational content out of this pointless busywork to teach DD and then do the colouring myself.

I like colouring. DD sometimes gave me a gold star

Lots of adults find colouring relaxing ... my last teaching student certainly did

In fairness this weekend is unusual just to all three pieces of work being very heavily colouring orientated.

On a normal weekend one or maybe two of the topics would involve colouring.

It took 1hr 45mins to complete homework, purely because of the colouring.

I will certainly mention online learning tools, we do have a parent consultation meeting (otherwise known as parents' evening ) coming up, so will raise it then.

He won't allow me to colour, I'm not as neat as him - he does have a point, I obviously didn't have my fine motor skills concentrated on as much as he had when I was a girl!

I always get confused: crayons to me means wax crayons, but to a lot of people ( and the teacher in my class) they are coloured pencils. There is a whole world of difference in how easy it is to colour with each!

Also, you would be surprised at how many children say they don't have paper,pens or pencils at home. And I've had a child say that mum wouldn't let them have any because their younger siblings take them and draw on the walls!

I do think it is TOTAL cop out.

DSs last school di an awful ot of colouring - even in Yr 6! Used to drive me mad!

Agree with Chicken Korma; the maths activity sounds fine, the rest seem pointless - especially the French, as French colouring in is identical to English coloring in. OP I feel your pain. DS had to do inordinate amounts of colouring in at school - fortunately he did not have to bring it home. Teacher said it was to strengthen hands and improve fine motor skills or was it keeps 'em quiet for hours and doesn't make a mess. I don't remember doing any colouring in at primary just plenty of our own drawings.

I've just been painting and drawing on my iPad. To colour in a shape you just choose a colour and tap the infill icon - hey presto! Even if he turns out to be graphic designer I don't think he'll be doing much old-school colouring-in. They seem to be spending too much time on a fairly unimportant skill to me.

Ah this just bugs me I'm afraid. It reminds me of supply teachers coming into my class and giving them colouring sheets to do ALL DAY! Even when I had left stuff out. Yes, colouring is good for developing fine motor skills, but so are a lot of other activities like threading, jigsaws, construction. Colouring has it's place, but IMHO this sounds like a lazy teacher who can't be arsed to make homework more exciting! It is funny though, because once they get to about Primary 5 all they want to do is come to the wee one's classrooms and colour with them!

Oh and for the record, I LOVE colouring!

Having to do this at home would have really bugged me - especially if the school had emphasised its teaching of French at this age. How much French would have been learned in this fashion - unless mum was available to teach it. Seems like homework just for the sake of it.