ThinkStretch summer workbooks are black and white inside, on purpose! Colorful workbook pages with bold red, blue and yellow shapes and wide eyed, illustrated children are attractive to adults. But kids can find all of the color, stimulus, and animation distracting to their learning task. ThinkStretch workbook interiors are black and white to leave kids room to bring their creativity to the pages. A completed ThinkStretch workbook contains illustrations and colored pages that only a child could create – not a graphic designer.
A summer workbook can be designed to be attractive and desirable to the purchaser – teacher, administrator or parent, or it can be designed to be usable for the student. ThinkStretch cares deeply that every student keeps all of their schools year skills over the summer. Flashy colored pages can distract students from the core task. Worse, distractions can limit a child’s ability to identify her own contributions to page. When a student completes a ThinkStretch workbook page, she can immediately see the results of her creativity and effort.
Flashy colors can often mask a depth of content. Some workbooks mask a lack of depth of content with flashy color and animations. A large, bold, bright illustration can cover up a lack of quality math concept review, or an illustrated text can mask the low quality of the written selection. In a ThinkStretch summer learning workbook, the content is the star and the student adds the razzle dazzle.
At ThinkStretch, we believe that the best illustrator of a child’s work is the child!
