Let's Color! (Kumon First Step Workbooks)

I recently discovered the Kumon books and I am super pleased with them.I will be reviewing all those I have so it will help other parents get a better idea of what's inside. The LET'S COLOR book is very nice and is part of the Kumon First Steps series for ages 2 and up. I must say that this book isn't for the very young only. My son is 8, and is a very normal child in every way, yet like some children, has not been very quick to develop fine motor skills for writing, holding a pencil, cutting, etc. He has enjoyed all his Kumon books very much, and they are not babyish. LET'S COLOR is a very nice book for children who would be overwhelmed by a whole uncolored page being placed in front of them to "finish". I like that most of each page in LET'S COLOR is colored already and is very colorful; only a white circle, square, triangle (nice for teaching shapes along the way) is left blank for the child to color in. My son is very pleased with just a small bit of coloring to finish the picture. He especially loves when his colored pencil ( I recommend Prismacolors over crayons) matches almost exactly with the color of the object and when finished, you can't easily see where he did the coloring. Later pages have you color 2 or 3 parts of the picture, such as blue, green, and yellow circles on the beach ball, or 3 different colored balloons, or the yolk of the egg. Then the last few pages are having the child color the 2 flowers, the mane of the lion, the icing and candles on a birthday cake, or different parts of a clown. Even these pages with more white areas to color, are not overwhelming to a child, as the full picture is only about 8 inches square. My son enjoyed the first "scribble" pages, where you drew hair on a boy, spaghetti on a plate, sprinkles on the ice cream, water squrting out of the garden hose onto the children, etc. He has enjoyed coloring in this book as we have our read aloud time in the evening. Kumon uses high quality heavy paper, and the coloring pages are printed on one side only. I highly recommend it to any parent of young children, and would make a nice little gift with a new box of colored pencils or crayons. These are attractive when finished to give to grandma and grandpa to hang on their refrigerator. I really think you and your child will have fun with this book.

Started my daughter on this just a week or so after turning 2. She had used a crayon before but only briefly and could only draw marks across the page in no deliberate or concentrated fashion. Dramatic improvement in her dexterity doing 1-4 of these a day over a period of around 3 weeks, as shown by photos. Do read the instructions provided for this very carefully, as this is not an ordinary coloring book, and is designed to follow an orderly progression of difficulty and components. I would suggest being very directly involved for the 3-10 minutes a day this might occupy and always stop when your child still seems interested. Hold on to the crayon box and give one crayon at a time after you both agree on the crayon to use. Keep the child on the correct page, introduce them to the object and direct them to what needs to be colored. Praise heavily, and encourage intentional drawing. If they want to color on their own, allow them to use the back or other paper, but keep the kumon exercises themselves a separate endeavor. Put the workbook out of reach when you're not ready to supervise. Book is very well designed as far as paper, artwork and the kinds of tasks. I'll say that the last few items (~34-39) seem to dramatically ramp up in difficulty, in terms of the size, shape and number of things to be colored per page to the point I don't think my daughter was quite able to follow as much as the others, but overall it was a good experience. Important is to recognize how this fits into the overall Kumon workbook progression. This goes onto "MORE Let's Color", and from there dexterity should be good enough for "tracing" (connect the dots) which can then progress to "easy mazes" (curved lines) and other maze books, after which the child's skill should be good enough to begin writing letters and numbers. As there are many workbooks for letters and numbers it's nice to see a book that works even before a child can draw a straight or curved line with any reliability. Age-wise 2.0 was just fine to start. I could see 18-20 month year olds potentially having a good time with this, but the child probably needs to be able to respond to suggestions, pointing and probably naming colors to get the full effect of the workbook. But overall it's the best "starting from zero" workbook I could imagine.

Anyone with a 2-year-old knows that (most of the time) they have extremely short attention spans. With my son starting preschool this fall, I wanted to encourage pre-writing skills and help him learn to hold a crayon/pencil/marker properly. (He currently still uses a fist at almost 3 years old). My problem? He's just not into most coloring books. He'll make a couple scribbles and run off to play with his trucks. This book was bought in addition to several other fine motor activities I have lined up (including many that did NOT include writing tools like crayons and pencils). This is the perfect supplement to activities like "writing" with your finger in a tray of sand or rice, lacing buttons or beads, etc. The book is small and the pages are easily removable, and the best part is it's not filled black and white line drawings! The pages teach coloring skills progressively, allowing children to scribble "ketchup" on an omelet, "hair" on a little boy's head and "confetti" coming from a party popper. As they gain more control over their crayons (which has happened even more through fine motor activities for my boy, as mentioned previously), children are encouraged to fill in a blank circle in the middle of a tomato or lemon. The book gives excellent tips for parents both at the beginning of the book and specific to the activity on each page. If you're looking for preschool prep, look no further than this colorful book. I recommend all the Kumon activity books I have purchased thus far!

My 2-year-old son likes colouring on the coloured pictures of this book much more than he likes traditional plain colouring pages. He can not hold a crayon properly or colour properly yet so I appreciate the explanation of how these skills will develop, and the activities which are appropriate for him. First the pages let him scribble (spaghetti on a plate, for example) and then he will move on to simple colouring.

Es un cuaderno a todo color. El tamaño es la mitad de un folio. Como se puede ver en las fotos no hay mucho para colorear, en mi caso esto es mejor, me está ayudando a trabajar con mi hija los colores y a que coloree solo la parte blanca del dibujo, así le resulta sencillo y no se aburre. Al final trae una especie de pizarra para rotuladores y un diploma.

A mi hija le encantó, le duró un mes, y ahora me pide mas libros. Comprare el que sigue, si es que lo encuentro.

Great ideas! My 2,5 years old enjoys the tasks very much. Just like with the other Kumon set of books I limited the number of pics to 4-5 per session. She loves it so much that I put a string along the wall and clipped each picture for display as she wants to show Daddy and talk about the pictures. Her skills are certainly improving but of course she isn't able to color only within the line and I doubt she will be able to for a long time but that's normal.

The absolute best series of first skill learning books for toddlers. I bought this for my daughter at 2.5 years and now at 2.9 years she has completed the whole series and is so confident and proud of her work. Don’t hesitate to buy this!