Message from jwyss

[Anonymous]

First rubber stamps, now coloring books, maybe I'll make this a trilogy and end with paper dolls. I like nothing more than getting out the colored pencils and scrubbing away at a nice picture from a coloring book. I guess it should come as no surprise that 7th graders like to color too. It's kind of nice for me at my school that all 7th graders have to have colored pencils for science class, but I keep a big tub of the pencils around anyway.

Dover Publications, Inc. publishes a number of coloring books on East Asia. I haven't purchased them all, but among the ones I use are Chinese Fashions, Chinese Designs, Japanese Fashions, and In Old Japan. They also have coloring books for other places and times. The books have color covers both inside and out which helps the students set the color palette, and I usually print these out and post them on the walls.

If I am pressed for time, I let them choose a page to color for extra credit and laminate and post the ones I like, but, if I have time, I like to go further. Each picture usually has a description, e.g.: "Ashikaga Period; This warrior is wearing a richly patterned jacket and loose trousers tucked into leg guards. The armor encasing his body is made of metal, leather, and silk." They have to color the picture, digitize it so we can project it, and compose a minute to two minute presentation expounding on something that they researched from the description.

Here's a web address for the coloring books at Dover

The attachment has a copy of one of the covers.