Free coloring pages are a great way to keep the kids busy and happy. Many websites offer many options for coloring pages, like different characters, themes, patterns, and more. Coloring time is an excellent way for kids to wind down after some intensive physical play.
It gets kids away from screens and is also a fantastic activity to do together as a family. After all, coloring can be just as relaxing for adults as it is for kids!
The following are some websites that offer free printable coloring pages.
Free Coloring Pages for Kids Websites
1. Super Coloring (Supercoloring.com)
This website has a large variety of coloring pages. It’s perfect for animal lovers, allowing the option to print realistic-looking drawings and cartoon-like images of animals. There are many different categories and hundreds of options within those categories. Some categories include nature, cartoons, cars, and more.
Super Coloring website also offers drawing tutorial pages, dot-to-dots, and other puzzles.
2. Printable Coloring Pages (Printablefreecoloring.com)
Printable Coloring Pages boasts more than 53,000 drawings to print and color. There are many categories to choose from, and many are related to popular culture, such as coloring pictures of celebrities, animation, movie characters, superheroes, and video game characters.
3. Coloring Book (Coloring-book.info/Coloring/)
Coloring Book’s coloring pages are of popular characters primarily from movies and television shows. The range of characters is broad, including superheroes, preschool television shows, popular children’s book characters, classic television shows like Looney Tunes and Pink Panther, anime, and video game characters.
4. All Kids Network (Allkidsnetwork.com)
All Kids Network isn’t just for coloring pages – many different kids’ activities are available on this site. Although there aren’t as many categories of coloring pages as some other sites have, the coloring pages are of many famous characters. The other pages are also attractive, with sharp images of animals and other cute characters.
5. Coloring Pages Only (Coloringpagesonly.com)
Coloring Pages Only features popular characters from movies and television and many other kinds of images. With so many categories to choose from, you’ll never run out of pictures to print that your kids would love to color.
6. Top Coloring Pages (Topcoloringpages.net)
Top Coloring Pages covers many famous characters and coloring pages of animals and holidays. Most pictures are very cartoonish, so this isn’t the best option if your child wants more realistic-looking pictures.
7. Just Color Kids (Justcolor.net/Kids/)
Just Color Kids organizes the pictures by theme and generally has life-like and cartoon-like illustrations for animals and other characters. Popular characters are separated by the production companies who created them, including Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks.
8. All Coloring Pages (Allcoloringpage.com)
All Coloring Pages has plenty of characters from popular movies and television shows. But many of the coloring sheets and personalities are for younger kids who are into Paw Patrol, Sesame Street, Mickey Mouse, etc. There isn’t a large variety of characters, but there would be enough on this site to keep preschool and junior elementary school kids happy.
9. Made by Joel (Madebyjoel.com/Free-coloring-Sheets)
Made by Joel is one site where you only find a couple of dozen sheets (22 to be exact!) But they are hand drawn and beautiful. Kids will gravitate towards these coloring pages because they aren’t just your typical Disney characters that you can easily print from any other website. These coloring pages are animals drawn with beautiful details and other scenes. Check it out – the kids will have fun with these.
10. Homemade Gifts Made Easy (Homemade-gifts-Made-easy.com/Coloring-pages.HTML)
Homemade Gifts Made Easy has a large selection of beautiful, free printable coloring pages for adults and children. The coloring pages are arranged on the website by topic. There are seasonal, significant holidays, animals, and other themes of interest to boys and girls.
What Kind of Printables Should You Look For?
With so many different coloring websites available, what kind of free coloring pages should you consider? Here is a list of things to consider when narrowing your search for free coloring pages.
Educational
If you are looking for coloring pages with a learning component like puzzles, dot-to-dot counting, math sheets with pictures, or reading sheets with images, then search for educational coloring pages. Kids are more likely to do worksheets if there are pictures they can color after they have completed the learning part of the coloring pages.
By Interest
Kids have many interests (unicorns, Pokemon, princesses, animals, etc.), and they constantly change. Whatever characters or themes the kids are into at the time, search for coloring pages that relate to them. They’ll get more excited if they get to color the characters they love.
Calming Patterns/Mindfulness
If you are looking at coloring to help your kids feel calm and have quiet time, then search for coloring pages with beautiful patterns like mandalas and encouraging words like keep calm and just breathe. Coloring can help both adults and children relax and relieve stress.
By Occasion
Involve the kids in decorating the house for special occasions by printing out coloring pages. Coloring pages are the perfect way to get kids excited about upcoming events and holidays, including Christmas, Halloween, Easter, birthdays, Thanksgiving, etc.
By Age
Younger children prefer coloring pages with larger shapes that are less busy with patterns. It will be easier for them to stay in the lines (if they want to!) since coloring larger shapes doesn’t require as much skill.
More intricate designs are suitable for older kids and adults with greater skills.
What Can Coloring Teach Children?
Creativity
Kids can choose their color palette and their style of coloring (short lines, long lines, more circular motion, etc.), and add different elements to their picture like glitter, jewels, etc.
Patience
Completing a neat, eye-catching coloring picture in the lines takes time and effort. By pacing themselves and taking time to color, kids will feel pride in the coloring pages they finish.
Develop Fine Motor Skills
Coloring helps develop fine motor skills, which are the movements we make using the small muscles in our hands and wrists.
Focus
It isn’t always easy for kids to sit still and focus on working on something for more than a few minutes. Coloring sheets can encourage kids to keep going, though. This is because coloring sheets visually indicate your progress on a task – you can tell just by looking at them how much you have left to do! And like puzzles, they don’t feel right until they are really complete.
Relaxation
Coloring a picture of something that interests and excites them will help kids learn to unwind and relax while doing something enjoyable. This helps develop emotional health and promotes well-being.
How To Make Coloring More Fun
Make coloring more fun by incorporating art supplies and different techniques into their coloring pages. Here are some ideas:
- Add things like googly eyes, glitter, and mini pom poms
- DIY a frame around the picture using popsicle sticks, gems, or sequins
- Use different coloring techniques like polka dots, stripes, and other patterns
- Use paint, pastels, crayons, or markers instead of just pencil crayons
- Create an art wall for display
- Turn them into greeting cards
Conclusion
Free Coloring pages are an excellent activity for both kids and adults. Coloring is a great way for families to spend time together, relax, have great conversations, show their creativity, and enjoy. Coloring pages from these websites are fun and exciting for kids to color and an excellent affordable activity for parents.
This article originally appeared on Wealth of Geeks.