Celebrating Coloring Book Day with Printable Coloring Pages

July 26, 2023 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

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:

Butterfly coloring pages from Little Moon Paper Company
Kawai style pages of all types from Mofukawa (the llama above is from there)
Turtle coloring pages from Easy Peasy and Fun
Watermelon coloring pages from Printabulls

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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Easy Lacing Cards to Make for Kids

Lacing is a great fine motor activity, and most kids go through a phase where they enjoy working with lacing cards. It helps promote focus and is a great quiet activity for kids to do in the car or to fill time in the classroom. And of course knowing how to lace is the beginning of knowing how to sew, which is great for all kids to learn (more on teaching kids to sew here).

There are lots of ways to make your own lacing cards. This one is just a pin but it’s easy to make lacing cards with any shape a child is into using cardboard and a nail to poke the holes. This could be fun for letter and number recognition or spelling the child’s name. Or try this version from Hey Azka, which uses a hole punch to make bigger holes so you can lace with shoe laces.

You can also just do lacing cards with paper, but it’s a great idea to print them on card stock and/or laminate them to make them sturdier for little hands. Homeschool Share has a set of alphabet lacing cards, which are free with email signup. Deceptively Educational has a set of number lacing cards with numbers 0 to 10.

Picklebums has some basic shape lacing cards, too.

Living Life and Learning has a bunch of cute printable lacing cards, including back to school designs, shoes kids can lace and learn to tie and ocean themed lacing cards. She also has tips for making your own lacing cards.

A Rose Tinted World made their lacing cards with craft foam, which makes them a little more durable than paper and you can cut it more easily than cardboard. They used a die cutting machine but you can also cut shapes by hand.

I also love the cat and mouse cards from Seam Whisperer. They also have some spring themed designs. So cute!

If you want to make lacing cards that are more open ended, check out this tutorial form Pretty Life Girls to make lacing cards that are more like geo boards. Theirs are made with wood but you can also do this with cardboard, craft foam or card stock.

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