Gotta Catch 'em All

October 26, 2018 9:19 AM

5-year-old loves all things Pokemon. Will pretend literally anything is a Pokemon. Will do anything even tenuously Pokemon-related. Needs to work on fine motor skills, especially drawing/writing, and following directions. Please recommend me the very best (like no one ever was...) Pokemon-themed color-by-number books, letter and number writing exercise books, maze-following books, color-by-number books, etc.

We've bought a few off Amazon. The only one that's been even remotely good is a plain old coloring book, but we're looking for something more structured. Are there worksheets or workbooks out there that encourage fine-motor-skill writing/drawing skills that are ALSO Pokemon-related?

Offering Pokemon cards or toys as a reward for doing other work is not motivating for kiddo. Our kid is somehow not motivated by rewards -- he needs to be motivated by what he's actively doing. He'll draw Pokemon with me, he'll write the names of Pokemon, but I need something more structured and comprehensive to get him to do more.

posted by erst to Education (6 answers total)

I think the "Will pretend literally anything is a Pokemon" "feature" of your kiddo might be an opening to look more broadly at animal-based activity materials. Then you could look for fantastic or fantasy animals, or even plain animals that are in black-and-white and allow him to color, and therefore create, his own Pokemon.

There's also Digimon, which our boys didn't like as much (video-wise) because it's actually quite a bit darker, but searching for Digimon workbooks and such might open up other avenues, but if you're only looking at the characters as creatures, they're pretty Pokemon-like in shape and design.

Also, what have you gotten that hasn't worked, and why? I ask only to prevent offering those as suggestions, and helping shape other responses.

If all else fails, you could also print out medium-to-large images of the actual Pokemon in black and white and reduce brightness, or just drop the brightness, and add writing template lines. I quickly made this example by copying this Bulbasaur into Microsoft Word, dropping the brightness to 40%, and adding the writing guide lines with dashes and spaced dashes. You can probably fit four to six Pokemon per 8.5" x 11" page. The provide kiddo with the tracing sheet and a print-out of a list of Pokemon by name only, or with thumbnail images like here and they can trace the lines, color them in, and then write the names himself. And the best part about printing your own is that if he gets upset that he messed up, as kiddos might do from time to time, just print off another sheet.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:25 AM on October 26, 2018

It's likely that not all the Pokemon will turn to traceable images so easily, so you could have more control over modifying brightness and turning full color images into black and white with GIMP, a robust, free image editing program for all PC platforms (Win/OS X/Linux), and there are programs that could do something similar for tablets.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:55 AM on October 26, 2018

"Will pretend anything is a Pokemon" meant he will decide any stuffed animal can be a stand-in for a particular Pokemon for pretend play, or that any kind of ball can be a Pokeball. Right now he's got a Halloween decoration skeleton crow that he claims is a Pokemon, and he's made up fake stats for it, and helped me draw a fake Pokemon card for it.

However, when it comes to doing worksheets or coloring activities, his pretending capabilities somehow shut off and I hear "But mooooooommmmm that's noooooooot actually a Pokemon!"

The stuff we got off Amazon didn't work because it was math-based and a little too advanced. Probably would be good for a 2nd or 3rd grader.
posted by erst at 6:08 PM on October 26, 2018

How about a How To Draw Pokemon book? This one seems to be easy and if he struggles with the drawing, maybe he could just trace it, moving the paper from step to step. Certainly drawing would be excellent fine motor practice if it isn't too hard for him.
posted by metahawk at 7:11 PM on October 26, 2018

I'm pretty sure they sell Pokémon math study books here in Japan, and for numbers the language wouldn't matter. Is that what you mean?
posted by LoonyLovegood at 8:38 PM on October 26, 2018

As long as there is some writing (number or letter) or drawing component to it, a math-based one is fine. Kiddo loves doing Pokémon math — like, with Pokémon cards, we say “how many HP do you have if Haunter and Mewtoo are on a team together?” — he can do that math in his head or on a calculator. Maybe we need to get him to write it out instead.
posted by erst at 7:28 PM on October 29, 2018