On one very popular listserv for youth services librarians someone posted asking if other libraries put out crayons and coloring sheets for kids. This is apparently a hot topic. A shocking number of libraries keep boxes of crayons at the reference desk and make kids come up to ask for them. An even shockingly larger number (ie, everyone who has responded to the whole listserv) put out coloring sheets.
This is what we do: put out boxes of crayons, put out paper. Let kids draw whatever the heck they want.
Some of the librarians were going so far as to create their own coloring sheets using clipart, apparently spending large portions of their day printing them out.
Don't get me wrong, I loved coloring sheets when I was a kid and I still think they're fun. But they do not encourage creativity at a time when the ways in which children are allowed to be creative are already so limited.
Plus I just can't get over the fact that these librarians have the time to print out hundreds of coloring sheets or distribute crayons at the reference desk!
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2 comments:
I definitely agree with you. Coloring sheets are not very creative at all because you just sit there and color in stuff that has already been drawn. A blank sheet of paper definitely requires a lot more creativity and thinking because you have no idea what to make of it until you sit down and start drawing.
Don't conform to those very uncreative ways...You Go Girl and Stand Up for Us Kids and Our Right to Express Creativity Freely!! haha ;o)
When I put out blank paper a large number of kids in my library get mad and ask everyone who works at the library for coloring sheets. So I end up putting blank butcher paper on one table and coloring sheets on another. The butcher paper ends up tagged my the middle schoolers and the end of two days, but at least everyone is sort of sated. Right?
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