Jesus Coloring Pages

These Jesus coloring pages follow the Gospels in order, from a boy in a carpenter's workshop to an empty tomb at sunrise, and then turn to the stories Jesus told. Each page shows one moment a child can name, which makes them easy to use one at a time in a Sunday school lesson or a week of family devotions.

The early years come first: the young Jesus planing a board in the workshop, and the boy sitting among the teachers in the temple. Then his baptism in the river, with the dove coming down, and the road with his disciples following. The miracles are here as children know them: the water jars at the wedding at Cana, Jesus asleep in the boat in the storm and then calming the storm with one hand raised, walking on the water as Peter steps out of the boat, healing a blind man at the roadside, and raising Jairus's daughter as her parents watch from the door. He teaches from a hillside in the Sermon on the Mount, points to the lilies of the field, holds a small bird for a ring of children, and lets children climb onto his lap while the disciples look on. He talks with the woman at the well, is anointed by a woman with a jar of oil, and watches the widow drop her two small coins into the temple box. Zacchaeus climbs a tree to see him, and one healed leper turns back to say thank you.

The last week and after: Palm Sunday, riding a donkey through the city gate over palm branches, washing the disciples' feet, the Last Supper, praying alone in the olive trees of Gethsemane, the empty tomb on Easter morning with lilies at the entrance, the road to Emmaus and the moment he is recognized breaking bread, and fish grilling on the shore at dawn. The parables fill the rest: the shepherd counting his sheep and climbing to find the lost one, the woman sweeping for the lost coin, the father running to meet the prodigal son, the vine and its branches, the mustard seed, the fig tree, the narrow gate and the lamp on a stand.

A page for every Sunday of the year

The pages line up with the church calendar, which makes planning easy. Palm Sunday and the week after take the entry into Jerusalem, the foot washing, the Last Supper and Gethsemane; Easter takes the empty tomb, Emmaus and the breakfast on the shore. Epiphany and the season after it suit the baptism and the wedding at Cana. The long summer stretch of ordinary time is where the miracles and parables go, one story a week. In a year of Sundays there is a page for most of them, and for Christmas the Christmas coloring pages have the nativity.

The parables as a set

The parables work especially well for children because each one is a single picture with a single idea. Three of them belong together: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son are told one after another in Luke 15, and all three end in a celebration because something lost is found. Print the three pages side by side, color them in a morning, and ask the children what the three stories have in common. Most of them work it out before the last page is finished.

The shorter parables make good memory verses. The mustard seed is the smallest seed that grows into a tree where birds nest; the lamp is not hidden under a basket but set on a stand; the narrow gate is harder to find than the wide one. A child who has colored the picture remembers the saying.

A quiet page after the lesson

Many Sunday school teachers keep coloring for the last ten minutes, after the story and the discussion, when the children need something calm to do with their hands. The pages work best when they follow the story just told: tell the calming of the storm, then hand out both boat pages, the storm and the calm, so the children can color the change. Tell the prodigal son, then hand out the father running down the road. The picture fixes the story better than a question and answer, and the finished page goes home to show the family what the lesson was.

What colors did they wear?

Clothing in first-century Galilee was mostly undyed: wool and linen in cream, beige, brown and gray. Dye was expensive, so a colored garment said something. Blue and red were for people with some money, and purple, made from sea snails, was for the very rich, which is why the rich men at the temple box can wear it while the widow wears plain cloth. For the sea and the lake, a clear blue-green; for the olive trees, a gray-green, lighter underneath the leaves. Faces and hands are best in warm olive and brown tones, as the people of the region have.

Big figures for little ones, crowds for older classes

Most of these are full Bible scenes, with crowds, boats, tables and olive trees, so they suit a child of six or more, or a Sunday school class coloring together. A few keep one or two figures large on a plain background, the lost coin, the lost sheep and the woman anointing Jesus's feet among them, and those are the pages for the youngest. Quick to color, above the grid, gathers them:

• Woman anointing Jesus's feet
• Shepherd finding the lost sheep
• Woman searching for the lost coin

The densest pages are the crowded ones, the Last Supper, the wedding at Cana, the two gates, where every figure, dish and stone needs its own color. Lots of detail opens on:

• Wedding at Cana
• Narrow gate and wide gate
• The Last Supper

Printing for Sunday school

Every scene downloads as a free 300 dpi PDF made for A4. On A4 print at 100 %; on US Letter use "fit to page", which reduces the drawing by about six percent without cutting a figure. How to find that option is in the printing guide. Add to pack gathers the pages for a whole term into a single file. The Bible coloring pages cover the Old Testament, and the cross coloring pages and Easter coloring pages go with the last week.