Printables Are Here!

Are you the type of kid (or grown-up) who likes to practice your fine motor skills by coloring inside the lines? Or do you love to color outside the lines and scribble your dreams and fantasies down on a piece of paper?

Either way, today's a great day to pick up a crayon and express yourself. Today is World Kids Coloring Day. School groups from 13 countries are holding coloring events to raise funds for Save the Children's Rewrite the Future campaign, a program that helps children in war-torn regions secure a quality education.

We're celebrating World Kids Coloring Day with the official release of our brand new "printables" - coloring pages adapted from drawings by our young artists from around the world. These pages are a unique and fresh take on "coloring-in".

Sometimes, what begins as the simple and therapeutic process of "coloring-in" can become a highly creative process that moves beyond lines and into the realm of pure imagination.

The debate between "coloring-in" and "blank page" drawing is an age-old one. Many art educators believe the process of "coloring in" inhibits a child's creative development. I've been drawing with my 4-year-old daughter since she was around 18 months old. The experience has been at various times both deeply therapeutic, and bountifully creative - sometimes more one than the other, and other times both in equal doses.

My daughter and I often resolve things on paper. Firstly, the very act of drawing, with its repetitive yet free nature, has an immediate calming effect. It's a form of meditation in a way, that slows the heart rate and reduces stress.

If it's down-time we need, we'll often just "color in", as opposed to drawing or painting on a blank page. But the blank page is vital for a different kind of expression; we express our mood and feelings through the colors, shapes, characters and situations we create on the page. It might be something as happy as a flower, as dramatic as a thunderstorm, or as peaceful as a meadow ... or it could be something much more complex, like "My dancing flower fell over in the blue rain" (which, translated might mean "I fell out with my best friend today").

Here at Poloppo we believe in both the therapeutic and inspirational capacity of art for children, and we can see endless possibilities in stimulating children's creativity by providing a different kind of coloring page - one that captures the freshness and immediacy of child art and encourages endless imaginative possibilities.

Today, we'll donate 25% of all sales of our raglan T's and baby onesies to Save the Children. Shop Poloppo.