Koala Coloring Pages

Koalas sleep about twenty hours a day, and a fair number of these sheets show exactly that: a koala wedged in a fork of the tree, another curled in a hollow trunk, one flat out in a hammock slung between two saplings. It makes for round, calm shapes, which is why these free printable koala coloring pages suit younger children better than most wild animal sets.

The trees are eucalyptus, drawn with long pointed leaves and gum nuts rather than generic foliage, and several sheets bring in the rest of the neighborhood: a kookaburra sharing a branch, a spray of round wattle blossom, a nest box fixed high in the leaves.

The youngest hands first

Quick to color above the grid keeps the sheets with big open shapes and thick outlines, and opens on the simplest.

• A close portrait of a koala
• A koala hugging one large leaf
• Three koalas on one trunk

Those are the ones to print for a three or four-year-old: a koala and a leaf, or a koala and a branch, and not much else to get lost in.

For slightly older children the scenes open out. A koala balances along a fallen log over a stream, another drinks from a rock pool, a young one crosses open ground between two logs, and one sits on a fence rail beside a track of daisies.

Gray, and how to keep it interesting

Gray is the one thing children get wrong on a koala, usually by pressing too hard and ending up with a flat slab.

• Two grays, not one. A light gray over everything, then a darker gray on the back, under the chin, around the ear edges and between the arms.
• Leave the chest and the inner ears almost bare. The contrast is what makes the fur look soft.
• The nose is the darkest thing on the page. Solid, almost black, with a small white spot left in it.
• Ears are tufty, not smooth. Short strokes out from the edge, all in the same direction.
• The leaves go blue-green, not grass green. That single choice is what says eucalyptus.

A few that are not in a tree at all

Not every sheet is field-guide accurate, and that is on purpose. A koala floats down a creek in a folded paper boat, another surfs a curling wave, one sits cross-legged on a stump with a cup and saucer, and one wears a long knitted scarf in falling snow. They are there for the children who want the animal to be doing something, and they print as quickly as the rest.

An hour on one page

Lots of detail keeps the dense end and opens on the busiest.

• A koala face in a leaf mandala
• A repeating koala and leaf pattern
• A sleeping koala inside a leaf border

The mandala builds rings of pointed leaves around a koala face, and the border sheet rings a sleeping koala with gum leaves and berries the whole way round. Both take a sharp pencil and reward a narrow palette: two greens, two grays, and one warm color for the blossom. The mandala coloring pages go further in that direction, and the bear coloring pages are the nearest thing in fur.

Each sheet is a free A4 PDF at 300 dpi, with no sign-up. Print at 100 % scale on A4 or "fit to page" on US Letter; the printing guide explains why. Press Add to pack under the ones you want and print them together, adding a few from the zoo coloring pages if you are building an animal topic.

Not a bear, and barely awake

The koala is a marsupial, not a bear, and almost every odd thing about it comes from what it eats.

Eucalyptus leaves are toxic, tough and almost worthless as food. A koala gets so little energy from them that it sleeps eighteen to twenty-two hours a day, and its liver spends most of the rest of the time breaking down the poisons. Its gut contains a fermentation chamber two meters long to squeeze out what it can. A joey is fed a special dropping from its mother to pick up the gut bacteria it will need, which is the only way it can ever eat the leaves itself.

The paws are the detail worth getting right on the page: koalas have two opposed thumbs on each front paw, not one, so they grip a trunk from both sides. Their fingerprints are so close to human ones that they have reportedly confused forensic examiners.

The fur is thicker and coarser on the back than on the belly, and greyer in the south, browner in the north. The nose is a large leathery patch and the darkest thing on the page.

The bear coloring pages hold the actual bears, and the zoo coloring pages the rest of the enclosure.

Sending one somewhere

Koalas are a long way away from most people who color them, and that turns out to be useful. These sheets travel well.

Fold a colored koala in half across the middle and it becomes a card, with the animal on the front and a blank inside. Grandparents get one. So do the pen pals a class writes to, and a koala is a better opening line than "how are you".

For a classroom doing Australia, the portrait sheet scales down neatly: print it small, color it, and glue it to the front of a folded sheet of card to make a set of matching invitations, place cards or book labels. The leaf mandala does the same job as wrapping paper for a small gift, printed twice and joined at the edge.

One more, for a child who has finished and wants the koala to stay: cut it out, tape a loop of thread to the back of its head, and hang it from a houseplant. It looks exactly right in a rubber plant, and it lasts until somebody waters it carelessly.

The bear coloring pages and the capybara coloring pages fold into cards the same way, and the animal coloring pages drawer holds the rest.