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Coloring Activities
Coloring activities
What a wonderful resource the internet is! There are so many free printable coloring pages available. This page lists some of the many coloring activities which use these great coloring sheets. You will also find links to pages packed full of links for great coloring pages. The coloring activity ideas here will cater for pre-schoolers right through to adults, so there should be something for everyone here. :-)
Picture credit: morguefile.com.
Preschool Coloring Activities
Coloring activities especially for young children
- Color them in with pencils, markers, paints or crayons. This will help with fine motor control, hand-eye coordination and pincer grip.
- Save the picture to your computer and open it in a paint program on your computer to color them in and add your own touches. This will help young children with their mouse skills. Some webpages even allow coloring whilst online.
- Often coloring pages have simple pictures which can be cut out with a pair of scissors. Several pictures can be colored, cut out and then pasted to a larger piece of paper.
- Use tracing paper to allow the child to trace simple images. Make sure you carefully secure the tracing paper to the coloring page so that it will not move.
- Some coloring pages will lend themselves very nicely to extra embellishments. For example you could glue punched flowers, leaves and butterflies (either punched out by the child or someone else) to some princess coloring pages.
- Print a jigsaw pattern on the back of the printed coloring page and cut it out after the page is colored.
A great punch set from Amazon
This huge set contains 40 paper punches and includes many popular shapes, including a heart, star, musical note, flowers, butterflies, leaves and many more. Perfect for a young child and also for adults.
Coloring Page Craft Activities
Crafty uses for coloring pages
Craft projects for children and / or adults
- Use as a pattern for painting on fabric - a T-shirt or pillowslip maybe. My daughter made the cute T-shirt on the right a few years ago from a dog coloring page.
- Use as a pattern for a collage (using fabric, felt, glitter or paper)
- Use as a pattern for an embroidery or redwork picture
- Use as a pattern for a stained glass window picture
- Use as a woodburning design.
- Make a hammer and nail picture .
- Make a punched tin.
- Use simple pictures as a pattern for carving a pumpkin
- Fill different sections of a printed coloring page with zentangle patterns (see sample zentangle patterns below)
- Use simple pictures as a pattern for very effective foil, glue and shoe polish pictures
Make some window clings using coloring pages
Coloring Activities for Themed Birthday Party
Themed Birthday Party
If you are having a themed birthday party for your child, there are many ways you can use coloring pages based on the theme.
For example for a horse themed party:
- Make party invitations by having your child color some horse coloring pages and write the details on the page.
- Give each child a set of crayons or pencils and a horse coloring page at the party for a fun coloring activity.
- Use a horse coloring page as a pattern for a birthday cake. You may need to enlarge the picture and print it out in two halves. Stick the halves together and cut out the horse. Place this as a pattern on a large cake and cut around it with a knife to give you a horse outline which you can then ice and decorate.
- Use an enlarged picture of a horse to play a game of pin the tail on the horse.
More Birthday Party Ideas
Anime party
Tinkerbell party
John Deere party
Cookie Monster party
Educational Coloring Activities
Educational Coloring Activities
I homeschool my children and I love reading to my children. Some children are very active and find it hard to sit still and keep focused when they are being read to. A related picture to color can keep the hands busy while the mind is focusing on the story being read. For example, you could print out wolf coloring pages for your children to color while you read The Call of the Wild by Jack London.
Coloring pages can be used for making posters or lapbooks about particulat topics. For example, you could print out food coloring pages to create a poster on the food pyramid or a lapbook showing where our food comes from.