Valentine's Day Coloring Pages

Valentine's Day in a classroom is mostly paper, glue and hearts, and at home it is a card made at the kitchen table the night before. When it is the heart itself a child wants, as a maze, a jigsaw or a shape woven from strips, the heart coloring pages are drawn for any day of the year. These free printable Valentine's Day coloring pages cover both. There are hearts on their own, for anyone who wants heart coloring pages and nothing else: one big heart divided into bands of zigzags and flowers, a bunch of heart balloons tied to a gift box, a wreath of little hearts with a bow, an open box of chocolates, a heart of vines growing out of a flower pot, and a jar of candy hearts spilling across the table.

The rest of the collection is people and animals being fond of each other. Two bears skate hand in hand on a frozen pond, penguins hold flippers on an ice floe, two cats sit on a rooftop with their tails curled into a heart, and two otters float side by side. A raccoon writes a valentine by candlelight, a bunny paints hearts on a canvas, and children cut out paper hearts for their cards and hang a heart garland across the window.

Which valentine pages for which age?

Press Quick to color and the grid keeps only the open shapes, simplest at the top.

• Otters floating with a heart
• A teddy bear holding a heart
• A ladybug with heart spots

These suit toddlers and preschool tables: the teddy bear holding a heart, the smiling heart waving hello, the heart with a bandage and the ladybug with heart spots are one shape each, with room to scribble. A step up, children from about five like the bears on the ice, the bunny at its easel, the love lock on a bridge and the box of chocolates, where every chocolate is a different shape to fill.

Valentine coloring pages for adults

Lots of detail keeps the other end, where lace, petals and patterns fill the page with small areas. The densest open the band.

• A heart mandala
• A floral heart with peonies and tulips
• A heart hot air balloon over a village

The heart mandala and the zentangle heart are slow, calming pages with a pattern inside every pattern, and the floral heart framed by peonies and tulips rewards fine pencils. The stained glass window with its doves works well in jewel colors with the lead lines left dark, and the heart shaped hot air balloon over a village is a whole landscape to fill (the colored pencil guide compares sets).

I love you coloring pages

Two pages spell it out. One has I LOVE YOU in big rounded bubble letters surrounded by hearts and stars, and the other writes it across a heart framed with flowers. Color each letter in a different shade of red, pink and purple, or keep the letters one color and make the hearts around them bright. The little shine marks on the bubble letters look best left white.

A third page says it without letters: a hand making the I love you sign from American Sign Language, with the thumb, index finger and little finger raised. The sign combines the handshapes for I, L and Y, which makes a nice thing to teach a class before they color it. The hands forming a heart with their fingers make a good pair for it.

Which colors say Valentine's Day?

Red and pink are the classic pair, and white keeps them from looking heavy: leave a narrow white edge inside each heart and the page looks finished straight away. Traditionally red stands for love and pink for affection and friendship, which suits a card for a classmate as much as for a partner. For something less expected, try purple and gold on the mandala, or pastel blue and mint on the cute pages. On a heart made of bands, like the patterned heart, alternate two reds and one pink so the stripes read clearly.

Why hearts, and why 14 February

The shape on these pages is not a heart, and never was.

An actual human heart is a lopsided muscle nothing like the symmetrical shape everyone draws. The heart symbol appears in medieval manuscripts, and the best explanations trace it to ivy or fig leaves, to the seed pod of a plant called silphium used in the ancient world, or simply to an easy shape to draw and remember. It attached to love in the Middle Ages and never let go.

The date comes from a Roman saint executed in February, whose day was later linked to the belief that birds choose their mates in mid-February. Chaucer wrote that down in the 1380s, and the association stuck.

Cupid is older still: the Roman Cupid, the Greek Eros, armed with arrows that make whoever they hit fall in love, often carelessly and with unfortunate results.

The red rose belongs to Venus, and the practice of sending them dates from a Victorian fashion for assigning meanings to flowers, where each bloom and even its color carried a message.

For coloring: red next to pink is harder than it looks, because a red pencil pressed flat goes waxy. Build red in two light passes over pink, and keep bare paper for the shine.

Cards and a class valentine exchange

Fold an A4 sheet in half twice (a Letter sheet folds the same way) and a simple page, like the teddy bear or the smiling heart, becomes a card that fits a standard envelope. For a class party, print one quick page per child so everyone finishes before the exchange, and keep the detailed pages for the quiet corner. The page with children making cards and the one with a heart garland across a window give ideas for decorating the room, and a colored page in a clear sleeve makes a place mat for the party table.

Press Add to pack under any drawing to set it aside, then print everything you picked as one PDF. The pack keeps your picks as you move between collections, so roses from the flower coloring pages, a capybara hugging a heart from the capybara coloring pages and a cat baking a heart cake from the cat coloring pages can go in the same print.

These are A4. 100 % scale on A4, "fit to page" on US Letter, and draft mode off so the thin lines stay dark. The printing guide has the rest. Each sheet prints as a free 300 dpi PDF; the rest of the year's dates wait in the holiday coloring pages.