Christmas Printables: Coloring Pages and Activities

Whether you have a long trip over the river and through the woods to your holiday gatherings, or just want to give kids something fun to do at home during their holiday break, these Christmas printable coloring pages and other activities might be just the thing.

This giant nutcracker coloring page from Hattifant has been on my list to share for a long time. It’s so big! It would be a fun family project to have everyone work on their own section, then put it together and see how it looks.

If you’d rather have coloring pages that are a little smaller, The Little Frugal House has a collection of 75 free Christmas themed printables in a PDF in Dropbox, so you can download the whole set and print out what you need.

Learn about how Christmas is celebrated in other parts of the world with these educational coloring sheets from Rock Your Homeschool. Even more coloring printables, including some games like I spy, a memory game and printable diner style game placemats are available from Gathering Beauty.

Print and color Christmas and winter themed bookmarks from Jessie Steury to use in all those books you’re getting for Christmas. (My grandmother always gave everyone in the family a book for Christmas, and I try to do the same.)

Bear and Dear has some word scramble pages you can print out and challenge everyone in the family to see who can figure out all the words fastest.

And you can slip a little learning in with this tessellated Christmas tree activity from Little Bins for Little Hands. A tessellation is a repeating pattern that uses the same shape over and over and doesn’t leave any holes. Their printable tree tessellation shows Christmas trees right side up and upside down in the negative space (minus a little at the edges). Of course you could just color the trees like a coloring page, but you can also cut out the trees and make them into a tessellated Christmas tree.

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Road Trip Printables

The celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is important throughout Mexico and other parts of the world. Her feast day is Dec. 12, and the celebrations honoring her appearance to Juan Diego in 1531 begin a few days before that.

Whether you celebrate yourself or just want to share about the celebration at home or in your classroom, Las Mañanitas: The Beautiful Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a good place to start. The book, by Ernesto Joel Vega Rosales and Jeanette Gonzalez Seneviratne, with illustrations by Dana Sanmar, tells the story of a family’s celebration of the feast day in both English and Spanish.

They prepare with a novena, which is nine days of prayers and preparations. The children, Lucia and Pablo, are given special outfits made by their grandmother that look like what Juan Diego might have worn when he saw Our Lady. The book describes the prayers that are made each day, such as a prayer for respect for life, for families and for the indigenous people of the Americas, to name a few.

As told in the book, Juan Diego was a native Mexican born near modern day Mexico City. His given name was Cuaauhtlatoatzin, which means “He who speaks like an eagle.” When he converted to Christianity his name was changed to Juan Diego, and as he walked to church he passed a hill called Tepeyac. One day he heard the birds singing especially beautifully and a voice called him to go to the top of the hill.

There he saw Our Lady of Guadalupe, who asked him to tell the bishop she wanted a chapel built in her name at the foot of the hill. The bishop asked for a sign that Juan Diego really saw her, and later she had him collect flowers that she blessed and take them to the bishop. When Juan Diego dropped the flowers, an image of Our Lady could be seen on his cloak, which is still on display in her basilica to this day.

The feast day is celebrated as mañanitas, which includes singing, indigenous music and dancing, and children presenting flowers to Our Lady. Juan Diego is remembered today as being humble, brave and faithful, and was the first indigenous American made a saint.

The book is colorful and tells the story in a clear way, and it’s fun to have it both in English and Spanish if you teach Spanish or speak Spanish at home or in the classroom. It’s a great way to learn the basics of the celebration and the story of Juan Diego and why he is still remembered today.

About the book: 40 pages, paperback, published 2024 by Loyola Press. Suggested retail price $14.99.

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