Letter Coloring Pages

An alphabet sheet does two jobs at once, which is why it is worth printing rather than just coloring. The letter is a shape to fill, and the objects around it are the sound it makes. These free printable letter coloring pages run the full alphabet, A to Z, one letter per page, each with three or four things whose names begin with it and a smaller lowercase version off to the side to trace.

A is an apple, two ants and an acorn. K is a kite, a koala and a key. Q is a crowned queen bee, a patterned quilt and a quiver of arrows. Z is a zebra, an open zip and a clump of grass.

One of the easiest sets on the site

Most of these sheets fall in the fast band. The letter is one large open shape, the objects are drawn big, and the outlines are thick enough to survive a crayon crossing them.

Quick to color above the grid gathers them, fastest sheet at the front.

• The letter M with a mouse and moon
• The letter E with an elephant and egg
• The letter L with a lion and lamp

For a three-year-old, print the letter of their own name first. It is the one they will come back to, and it is usually the first letter anybody learns to recognize.

How to use one sheet

• Say the sound, not the name of the letter. "Buh" before "bee". The objects on the page are all the same sound, which is the point of putting them there.
• Color the big letter first, in one flat color, then the objects. Doing it the other way round means the letter never gets finished.
• Trace the small one last, with a pencil rather than a crayon.
• Keep one color per letter if you are printing several. An alphabet colored in a repeating sequence of three colors looks like a set when it goes up on a wall.
• Fat crayons beat felt tips at this age. Felt tip on copy paper bleeds through to the next sheet.

The ten scene sheets

Some later pages redraw letters as objects rather than letters with things beside them, and they suit a slightly older child. Wooden toy blocks stacked into a C with a cat asleep against them and a ball of wool at its foot. A kennel whose doorway is a D, with a puppy sitting in it. A shelf unit built in the shape of an E holding four egg cups. A garden hose coiled into a G above a watering can and three pots of seedlings. A field gate shaped like an H with a horse looking over it.

They are the sheets to print when a child already knows the alphabet and wants something to look at rather than something to learn.

Making an alphabet frieze

The whole alphabet colored over a few weeks and pinned in order round a room is the obvious project, and it is worth printing on 120 gsm paper rather than copy paper if it is going to stay up. Press Add to pack under each letter you want and print them as one PDF rather than twenty-six separate files.

For a child's name rather than the whole alphabet, print only the letters you need, color them in the same two colors, and cut them out to spell it across a door.

Games to play once the letters are colored

An alphabet sheet is worth more after it is finished than before, because a colored letter is a game piece.

Cut the big letter off each finished sheet and keep them in a box. With a dozen of them a child can spell their own name on the floor, which is the first word anybody wants to write. With the whole set they can lay out the alphabet and find the gaps, and they will notice that some letters are missing long before they can recite the order.

The objects are the other half. Cut those out separately and the game becomes matching: lay the letters in a row and post each object under the right one. A child who is not yet reading can do this on the sound alone.

Two more that need nothing but the sheets. Hide the colored letters round a room and call out a sound rather than a name, so the hunt is for "mmm" and not for "em". Or tape one letter to the front of a shoebox each week and let a child fill it with small things from around the house that begin with it, which is the sound game played slowly over seven days.

And the tracing letter, the small one in the corner, deserves a mention: trace it with a finger before a pencil ever touches it. The shape goes in through the hand first.

The preschool coloring pages hold the rest of the drawer, and the happy birthday coloring pages have lettering a child can color for a real occasion.

Why uppercase comes first

These sheets lead with the capital letter and put the lowercase one beside it to trace, and that order is deliberate.

Capitals are made almost entirely of straight lines and simple curves, and they sit in a single band between two imaginary lines. Lowercase letters have ascenders and descenders that go above and below, and they contain shapes a small hand finds genuinely hard: the closed loop of an a, the crossing of an e.

There is also a matching problem. Several capitals look like their lowercase versions (C, O, S, V, W, X, Z), and several do not at all: A and a, B and b, G and g, R and r. Children learn the matching pairs long before they learn that those are the same letter, which is why having both on one page matters more than it looks.

Two other things worth knowing. Letter reversals are normal until about seven, especially b and d, and correcting them heavily does more harm than good. And children usually learn the letters of their own name first, out of order, which is why printing those first is the best possible start.

Say the sound rather than the name while working, "sss" not "ess", because the sound is what reading needs.

Beyond the alphabet

Nothing else in this collection has lettering on it, and nothing needs reading. For more sheets drawn at the same weight, the preschool coloring pages hold the whole drawer, and every other collection on the site has a Quick to color button that does the same job inside its own subject.

Each sheet is a free A4 PDF at 300 dpi, with no sign-up. Print at 100 % scale on A4, or choose "fit to page" on US Letter; the printing guide explains the difference.