Coloring Book - Educational Uses

Educational Uses

Coloring books are widely used in schooling for young children for various reasons. For example, children are often more interested in coloring books rather than using other learning methods; pictures may also be more memorable than simply words.

As a predominately non-verbal medium, coloring books have also seen wide applications in education where a target group does not speak and understand the primary language of instruction or communication. Examples of this include the use of coloring books in Guatemala to teach children about "hieroglyphs and Mayan artist patterns", and the production of coloring books to educate the children of farm workers about "the pathway by which agricultural pesticides are transferred from work to home." Coloring books are also said to help to motivate students' understanding of concepts that they would otherwise be uninterested in.

They have been used as teaching aids for developing creativity and knowledge of geometry, such as in Roger Burrows' Altair Designs.

Since the 1980s, several publishers have produced educational coloring books intended for studying graduate-level topics such as anatomy and physiology, where color-coding of many detailed diagrams are used as a learning aid. Examples include The Anatomy Coloring Book and subsequent book series, by Wynn Kapit and Lawrence Elson, published by HarperCollins (1990s) and Benjamin Cummings (2000s).

Some publishers have specialized in coloring books with an explicit educational purpose, both for children and for adults. The books will often have extensive text accompanying each image. Examples of publishers include Dover Books, Running Press, Troubador Press and Bellerophon Books.