Where Has Coloring Gone? by Dali Castillo

     I just came across yet another one of those commercials where some adult is singing accolades about the benefits and wonders of "coloring."  Yes, coloring. Really.  So, this whole adult coloring phenomenon made me think of two things. 1-Someone is pretty darn smart making money from this.  2-Where has all the coloring gone?  Since I already know that point number 1 is a fact, I was left thinking more about point number 2.  Where has all the coloring gone? Well, I can tell you where it hasn't gone.  It hasn't gone back to the kindergarten classroom or any classroom for that matter, and, in my humble opinion, this is truly a sad state of affairs. 

     I spent nine years teaching kindergarten in an old fashioned kindergarten classroom.  You know the one.  It had a full play area with a stove, refrigerator, pots, pans, dishes, tons of building blocks, trucks, dolls, puzzles, easels, paint, paintbrushes, and a full wardrobe of clothes for playing dress up.  My students spent about 10-15 minutes of their "instructional" time in that area while I watched and took notes. The "instructional" time there consisted of improving communication skills, vocabulary skills,  social skills, and building brain cells through play and imagination.  On top of that they had time to use clay, not that soft Play-doh, but clay.  The hard stuff that makes you use the muscles in your hands to make things, which in turn builds small motor skills necessary for writing, cutting, glueing, pasting, (Was I the only one that ate paste at the ripe age of 5? Something about that thick goo that had this aroma to it,...entirely too tempting not to have tried it at least once.) and, you guessed it, coloring. Oh, and let me not forget the skills of tying shoes, buttoning buttons, and zipping zippers. And then there was singing.  We sang songs, lots of songs, which was even more fun because it was a maintenance/dual language classroom.  That meant we learned everything in two languages,  English and Spanish.  Yah, those were the days.

     Yes, those were indeed the days.  The days where it really did seem that kids were first when it came to doing what was best for them educationally.  So, what happened?  Here are the cliff notes. Play is pretty much nonexistent in the kindergarten classroom.  Cutting, pasting, painting, tying, buttoning, zipping, conversing are pretty much gone, and coloring is hanging on by a thread.  All of that has been replaced almost exclusively by reading and writing.  Is this a bad thing?  Yes and no.  No, it's not a bad thing because exposure to reading and writing in kindergarten is necessary.  However, it is a bad thing when reading and writing  has just about completely (and in some places it has completely) replaced cutting, pasting, conversing, zipping, tying, and so on.  Curriculum, time constraints, and expectations have eliminated the necessary balance between reading, writing, and the rest. Sadly, this balance is not found in kindergarten or in the years beyond kindergarten.  

     So, I said all that to say what?  I said all that to say that that is where coloring has not gone, and that is why adults are now reconnecting with the art of coloring.  Maybe it just reminds them of their days in kindergarten.