Planet Coloring Pages

A planet is a circle, and a circle is one of the first things every child can color. These planet coloring pages start there and travel out across the solar system, with real planets, rovers and astronauts for young scientists and cute smiling planets for the youngest space fans.

The planets themselves come first. Saturn shows off its rings among the stars and again with rings of ice and rock, Jupiter wears its stripes and its Great Red Spot and is surrounded by its four big moons, cloudy Venus sits close to the sun, cratered Mercury passes in front of it, and a tilted ringed planet is circled by little moons. Earth appears with its continents and swirling clouds, side by side with the moon, and seen from above by a satellite. There is the whole solar system on its orbits around the sun, the asteroid belt between two planets, a comet streaking past a ringed planet, a spiral galaxy, a giant volcano erupting on a planet and a meteor shower falling on a rocky world.

Explorers visit them all: a rover crosses the craters of the moon, a Mars rover climbs a rocky slope with its robotic arm, an astronaut goes on a spacewalk in front of a striped planet, another plants a flag on the moon, a space shuttle rises above the Earth at sunrise and a space station floats near a planet. The cute pages are for the youngest children: a smiling kawaii Earth with the moon, an Earth wrapped in a cozy scarf, a kawaii Pluto with a PLUTO banner, four planets holding hands under the word PLANETS, a friendly alien waving by a rover, a cat astronaut sitting on the moon and a dog astronaut leaping over the craters. Children appear too: one looks at Jupiter through a telescope, one sits on a crescent moon among the planets and one blasts off in a cardboard box ROCKET with a colander for a helmet.

Our solar system

There are eight planets in our solar system. In order from the sun, they are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. A classic way to remember the order is "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles." Pluto was called the ninth planet until 2006, when astronomers classified it as a dwarf planet, which is why it gets its own page here.

A few planet facts children love:

• Jupiter is so big that all the other planets could fit inside it, and its Great Red Spot is a storm larger than Earth.
• Saturn is so light for its size that it would float in a giant bathtub.
• Venus is the hottest planet, even though Mercury is closer to the sun.
• Mars has the tallest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons.
• A day on Venus is longer than its year.

What color are the planets?

The real colors make a great lesson:

• Mercury: gray, like the moon.
• Venus: pale yellow and cream, hidden under thick clouds.
• Earth: blue oceans, green and brown land, white clouds.
• Mars: rusty red and orange.
• Jupiter: bands of cream, tan, orange and brown, with a reddish spot.
• Saturn: pale gold with lighter rings.
• Uranus and Neptune: pale blue-green and deep blue.

The cute planets can be any color at all, and a black or dark blue background with white stars makes every planet glow.

Cute planets and detailed ones

The single planets and the kawaii pages are easy for young children. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Volcano planet
• Comet
• Venus

The rovers, the solar system and the space station are full of detail for older kids. Lots of detail begins with:

• Mars rover

Planet activities for school

Planet pages are perfect for a solar system project: color one planet a day, cut them out and hang them in order from a coat hanger or along a string to make a mobile. The solar system page is a good reference for the order and the sizes, and the rover and astronaut pages lead nicely into a talk about how we explore space.

Printing

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 nothing is cut off. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack prints the whole solar system at once. More space is in the solar system coloring pages and the space coloring pages, and our home planet has its own Earth coloring pages.