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Celebrating Coloring Book Day with Printable Coloring Pages

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August 2 is National Coloring Book Day in the United States, and while every day is a good day to color, this is a great time to break out the crayons, colored pencils and printable coloring pages (especially since it’s so hot in a lot of the United States/Northern Hemisphere right now!).

Did you know The McLoughlin Brothers, a New York publishing firm, is credited as the producers of the first coloring book? Their The Little Folks Painting Book came out in 1879 and continued to produce coloring books for kids until 1920, when it became part of the Milton Bradley Company (thanks for that tidbit, Wikipedia!).

While many coloring books through the years have targeted kids, we know adults love coloring, too, and you can find published coloring books on just about any subject, from pop culture to animals, mandalas and more.

If you want to make your own coloring book from printables, it’s easy to do, because there are so many free printable coloring pages out there on just about every subject you can think of. A few examples I found on Pinterest:

Or check out all the options at sites like Coloringoo, Cool2BKids, Crayola, Printable Free Coloring, Super Coloring, Just Color or Coloring.ws to name a few. We printed so many coloring pages from these sites when my daughter was younger and would come at me with specific requests for what she wanted to color.

Did you know that Canva also has coloring pages? If you already pay for the service or are willing to pay for coloring pages, you can find some fun options there to make your own coloring book. You can also use simple shapes from their library or even add your own drawings. (Here’s how to make a coloring book in PicMonkey, too.) So many fun options!

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Christmas STEM Projects

Holidays are a great time to pull in some themed STEM projects. Even kids who aren’t usually into science can get excited about making a reindeer fly or making a Christmas tree out of 3D shapes. Check out these fun Christmas STEM activities to try in your classroom or at home.

Speaking of making reindeer fly, there are lots of different takes on this engineering challenge. In the instructions from The Educator’s Spin on it, kids make a reindeer from recycled materials, then use a string to make it “fly.” You can also do this with a balloon, like in this version from Team Cartwright.

And that Christmas tree project? That one is from Steamsational, and it calls for making a bunch of 3D triangles you then assemble into a tree. The post includes all the tips you’ll need and a printable template for making the triangles.

Another cute idea from Steamsational is making Santa’s sleigh out of an egg carton. Give kids design challenges such as that Santa must stay in the sleigh, it should be able to move and pull weight. It’s so fun to see what kids come up with.

Science Sparks has a printable book full of Christmas-themed experiments with templates kids can cut out and use to make spinning sleighs, shadow puppets, a paper tube to test how much weight it can hold and more. These activities are really low prep beyond the printing, so they’re great when you need to fill a little time at home or at school.

If you have Legos and jingle bells you can make a simple engineering challenge by having kids build mazes that the bells can roll through. Get the details from Innovation Kids Lab. (And check out this fun book of Lego Christmas ornaments!)

Of course you can also put a Christmas spin on classic STEM activities, like making a baking soda volcano in a plastic or glass ball ornament (Little Bins for Little Hands), red and green magic milk (Fun Learning for Kids), Borax crystal ornaments (Go Science Kids) and more!

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