Customer Reviews

Let's Color! (Kumon First Step Workbooks)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

My 40 month old son was born with birth defects on his hands. The few fingers he has are very short and his muscles are a little weak. This book offers him a challenging and fun way to work on his fine motor skills. This workbook is well made with thick paper and a lot of colors. You cut off about 2/3 of the page and give it to your child and encourage him to color in the dot with a matching color on some of the pages. This is encouraging to small children so they don't have to fill in an entire page themselves. The last page is a write on wipe off page! The only drawback is that $5.95 for a small workbook is rather pricey to me.

I work as a kindergarten teacher and spend a lot of time at the beginning of the year helping students develop their fine motor skills. One of the best ways to work on these skills is to engage children with coloring. When I saw the beginner Kumon books, I immediately wanted to try them with my 2 1/2 yr old son, and I'm so glad I made the purchase. He absolutely LOVES these books! They are very colorful, the illustrations are great, and the directions are very specific. For example, one his favorites was to use a blue crayon to draw rain coming from the clouds. The books gradually become more difficult, and now he has to fill in a white area with a specific color. I tell him that we are working on "school" and he loves it! Because of the reasonable price, I have also bought these for his friends for birthday gifts as well! :)

My 3 year-old was able to color well when she wanted to. The problem was that she usually didn't want to. She usually just wanted to scribble and finish her pictures as quickly as possible. This book actually helped her focus a bit better and take more time with her work. I think it also helped that the paper quality was so high that we were able to use her markers to do the exercises. Obviously, with most coloring books, the markers bleed through the paper so badly you ruin the following pictures. There would occasionally be a dot or two on the following page when my daughter really got carried away with coloring a particular spot.

This is excellent for teaching fine motor skills to little ones. I am a teacher and I use it with my own three year old.

I have a very active 2 year old and I was looking for workbooks that were both fun and educational. The pictures in this book are cute and colorful. I love that the illustrations of the children are very diverse. My child actually loves to sit down to do this workbook and many of the other Kumon books in this series. Getting a 2 year old to sit and color for 5 minutes is no small feat. The beginning pages are designed to help the child get used to holding crayons and scribbling.( for example he/she can draw spaghetti on a child's plate) By the end of the book, (about 38-40 sheets total) the colorful pictures have a few white areas that are left for the child to fill in. (for example, a bunch of purple grapes with one white circle or a birthday cake with white candles and a strip of icing).
This book is helpful for teaching toddlers how to hold a crayon and how to color. The paper is good quality. This is much better than a standard coloring book. We enjoyed this book with the "So Big" Crayola crayons.

It gave us a quality mother-son time after the daycare... Also teaches about colors and shapes, and concepts... Simply I loved it... Gifted so many times after getting one...

This series is a great incremental approach to working on coloring/motor skills. Although this is recommended for 2 and up, I would say it is better suited to older 2 year olds (2.5 and up) rather than all 2 year olds...primarily because most young 2 year olds aren't as suited to listening to creative instruction (like "color here" etc).

My son does love the book, though, and I love the incremental approach which builds confidence and skills at the same time!

These Kumon books are great, preschool geared fun. My son loves to do them and it's a treat so I only let him do one or two at a time. They have simple, fun ideas for them to color.

This book challenges my advanced 2 year old and she is rapidly getting better at coloring within the lines. This book is fun for her and she loves doing her "homework."