Kids Art: Vikas Learning Colours (Fun with Stickers)

I now know what it feels like to be steamed, boiled, baked, fried, roasted and stewed in my own sweat alive, all at the same time, thanks to Madras heat wave. I feel awful for putting Ana and Oggie through this, but, we can't have everything, so, we take the good with the not-so.

We just got back from a harrowing short road-trip visiting some temples in South India that I wanted to take the kids to. In a NON-A/C car! Pure torture. Not intentional, just so happened that it needed to be done, timing seemed right and I didn't want to put it off till later in my visit. But, more about the trip later.

After two weeks of first-hand observation, my dad's nickname for Ana: Mowna Vratha Upavasini. It is a Sanskrit made-up phrase that roughly translates to Vow-of-Silence-and-Fast-Observer, on account of Ana refusing to talk much (claims she is shy), and not eating anything (claims she doesn't like anything we offer).

But, I am rambling...

It has been a bit of a challenge to keep Ana occupied here - she is used to doing a lot of stuff, quite independently, and now, feeling displaced and frustrated by the heat, plus missing her dad a lot, she is becoming quite a handful. So, my mom looked around and bought a few activities books that she thought might keep her engaged for a week at least. She finished them in 2 days :)

This here is one such activity that she took to easily and enjoyed. We found it at a local store, for Rs.40/-called Vikas Learning Colours. It is one of a series of books where each of the 8 or 10 pages has a printed outline of a scene, part of which has solid lines, and part of which has dotted lines.

The book comes with stickers marked clearly for each page. Simply peel the stickers for that particular scene in that page, stick it on the dotted areas correctly (pattern matching). Then, complete coloring the picture using crayons with suggested colors.

They have abbreviations for suggested colors printed on the picture like G for green, Gr for grey, Pk for pink, V for violet, O for orange, R for red and so on. So, it was also a good way for Ana to figure out what colors to use - of course, G she knew right away as green just looking at the picture, but Gr for grey was not easy to figure out for her...

It is quite a simple concept, and could be interesting for 3-4 year olds, if they are into stickers and coloring. The pictures are cute with bright colors when done per instructions. Initially, I showed her one - the bear picture - then she did a few entirely without help.

The only complaint I have is that getting the stickers out of the page could be a bit of a challenge for tiny hands. And, it didn't really teach much about colors like the title suggests, but, I am fine with that.

While stickers and crayons were not new to Ana, she enjoyed the combination of the two activities to produce a beautiful finished product, almost effortlessly, and as I found out, almost immediately :)