Family Coloring Pages

The best family moments are rarely the big ones. They are the pancakes on a Sunday, the pile of leaves someone jumps into, the evening everyone ends up on the same sofa with a book. These family coloring pages are made of those moments, spread through the seasons, with a few animal families mixed in.

At home, a family reads together on the sofa while the cat sleeps below, bakes and cuts out cookies, gathers around a tall stack of pancakes, crowds around an upright piano while a boy plays, and washes a shaggy dog in a tub of bubbles in the garden. A grandmother kneads dough at the kitchen table with her two grandchildren, a grandfather fishes from a dock with his grandson, and three generations share a dinner with a roast turkey. A mother in a rocking chair holds a newborn with the father beside her.

Outside, families plant a vegetable garden, tend pots of flowers under hanging bean vines, cycle down a country lane with flowers in their baskets, row among swans on a lake, hike a forest trail with backpacks, roast marshmallows at a campfire, fly kites on the beach and picnic on a checkered blanket with a sleeping puppy. Children in raincoats splash in puddles. The year turns with the pages: a family carves pumpkins on the porch, rakes a pile of leaves while the youngest jumps in, builds a snowman, trims the Christmas tree and watches fireworks from a hill.

The animal families are some of the sweetest: a bear family by a mountain stream, a mother duck leading her ducklings, elephants spraying water beside their calf, owls peeking out of a tree hollow, penguins sliding down a snowy hill, rabbits in the rooms of their burrow, foxes curled around their cubs and giraffes under an acacia. Two pages are made to be personalized: a family portrait framed in a wreath of flowers, and a family holding hands beneath a big heart with room inside it.

Every family looks different

The families on these pages are drawn simply on purpose, and that leaves a lot of room. Hair, skin and clothes can be colored to look like the child's own family, and there is no rule about who belongs in the picture. A page with two parents can become a page with one parent and a grandmother, or two dads, or an aunt who picks the children up from school. The animal families help here too: a child can decide that the three owls are them, their mom and their brother, whatever the drawing shows.

For children who are going through a change (a new baby, a move, a family that now lives in two houses), a page where they choose who goes where is sometimes an easier way to talk about it than a direct question.

Pages that start a conversation

Most of these scenes are things a family can actually do together, and that makes them good prompts:

• Which of these have we done? Point out the camping page, the cookie page, the kites.
• Which one should we do next? Color that page first and put it on the fridge as a plan.
• Who is who? On the heart page and the wreath portrait, the child names everyone and can write the names underneath.
• What was it like when you were little? The grandparent pages are an easy way in for grandparents to tell their own stories.

Colors for the seasons

Because the pages follow the year, the season is a good place to start choosing colors. Spring pages, like the garden and the bike ride, look fresh in light greens, pinks and sky blue. Summer scenes, the beach and the lake, take warm yellows and deep turquoise. Autumn is all orange, rust and brown for the leaves and the pumpkins, and winter pages look best with a pale blue sky, white snow and one strong color, like a red scarf or the ornaments on the tree. The fireworks page is the exception: a dark blue or black sky first, then the bursts in bright colors, so they really stand out.

From simple portraits to busy scenes

The heart page and a few of the animal families are drawn large with few small shapes, and suit younger children. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Our family
• Penguin sledding
• Bear family

The garden, the dinner table and the flower balcony are full of small details. Lots of detail begins with:

• Flower balcony
• Family portrait
• Baking with grandma

A family book to keep

Color one page for each member of the family, or one for each season, and staple them together with a cover made from the heart page. Write the date and who colored what on the back of each sheet. It makes a lovely present for grandparents, and a child who finds it again years later will remember more than they expect. These pages also suit family days at school, family reunions, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Grandparents Day, when a colored page with a few words underneath is often the gift that stays on the fridge longest.

Printing the family pages

Every page is a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent so everyone in the picture stays on the paper. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack puts a whole family book into one file. More pages about the people we love are in the friendship coloring pages, family dinners in the Thanksgiving coloring pages, celebrations in the happy birthday coloring pages, and more animal families in the animal coloring pages.