Category Archives: Colouring

Mother’s Day Colouring

Looking for some printable colouring for Mother’s Day?  we have a few below, carefully designed for children of all ages to enjoy.  In creating them we have focused on magical creatures as well as the animal world.

Why bother with printable colouring in our digital world?

Sometimes people wonder whether to bother with printing out colouring pages for children (or indeed adults!) in a world where there are so many activities to do online.  However, colouring with real pens on real paper is more than just a fun activity, it helps children develop their fine motor skills.  And colouring on a digital device is not the same – using pencils, crayons, or markers to colour things in on paper requires a different set of motor skills compared to tapping or swiping on a screen.  Holding and manipulating these tools can improve hand-eye coordination and develop fine motor skills.   Plus of course, there’s the fact that colouring on paper gives children a rest from all the distractions online.  To be honest, a bit of time spent colouring on paper is good for adults too, for as we’re all realising, reducing screen time can help alleviate eye strain, promote better sleep patterns, and encourage more physical activity.

Another big reason to invite your child to colour in a printable page is that on days such as Mother’s Day, a picture they’ve worked on can make a beautiful gift!  There’s a real sense of accomplishment which comes with being able to give someone something you’ve made look good, too.  So it’s also an excellent way to amplify the joy of giving.  Talking of which, you might find our printable Mother’s Day cards useful – like our colouring, we designed them with young children in mind.

Dydd Gwyl Dewi – St David’s Day

Croeso i popeth ar gyfer Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant!  Welcome to all our St David’s Day printables!

It’s still early days for our St David’s Day resources and we’ll be adding more as the years go by.  However we’ve already created some great celebratory printables below and we hope you and your children enjoy them.  Have a very happy time on the 1st of March, as you remember the patron kindly, nature-loving patron saint of Wales.

Please note that parts of this page have been written in Welsh as well as English, in keeping with the spirit of celebrating Wales.

Want to know more about how Wales is celebrating St David’s Day this year? You can find a list of events, as well as a bit of history on the Visit Wales website.

If you’re a teacher or if you just fancy learning a bit of Welsh for fun, you might find these basic worksheets useful. They are designed to be easy enough for primary school children, but any learners can use them.

And here are a few more colouring pages, including a cute Welsh dragon drawn with thick lines that are easy to stay inside – ideal for younger children.

Decorations are next, so you can decorate your home. We think the Welsh dragon paper chains look especially lovely when they’re done. You just print them, cut out the strips and stick the ends together with a bit of glue or tape to form a chain.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus i chi a’ch blant! x

And here are some printable St David’s Day cards, because it’s always nice to send something to let your family and friends know you ae thinking of them on the 1st of March, especially if Wales occupies a special place in their heart.

Looking for a card to colour in?  Below is a lovely Red Dragon card which should be fun for children to colour in themselves.  It is suitable for younger and older children due to its strong, clear design with substantial lines and plenty of space for easy colouring, as well as some detailed parts.  All in all, a great chance for children to get creative on St David’s Day.

Dyma gerdyn hyfryd gyda dyluniad clir a chyfeillgar o’r Ddraig Goch, sy’n sicr o fod yn hwyl i’w lliwio gan blant. Mae’r gofod mawr, ardal lliwio eang a manylion y draig yn rhoi cyfle i blant fod yn greadigol gyda’u dewis lliwiau. Mae’r llinellau cryf a’r elfennau dylunio syml yn addas iawn ar gyfer ystod oedran eang, o blant ifanc i’r rhai ychydig yn hŷn.

 


P. S. If you love dragons, you can find more of our dragonish resources here.

Schoolwork Achievement Certificates

Well, it’s back to school after the summer and we always get requests for achievement certificates for schoolwork around this time of year.

So if you’re a teacher or a parent helping with your child’s learning, here are some of our favourite certificates.  We hope they’ll be of use to you:

Our Award from the Council of Dragons is always popular too!

Printable children's certificate saying you've been as clever as a dragon.
Clever as a Dragon

You might also like these school-themed resources:

St George’s Day Printables

If you’re looking for things to print out for St George’s Day this year, we’ve gathered all ours together below.  You might also want to check out our general dragon page for further ideas.

First off, here are a couple of St George certificates:

We have some dragon certificates available too, which might come in handy.  Here are a couple of examples – click here to see more:

We’ve also got some knight and dragon-themed colouring:

Looking to decorate your home or classroom?  You might find something useful in our collection of St George’s Day bunting:

You might also like these free printable greetings cards:

St George’s Day Story for Young Children

One of the problems with the St George’s Day story is that like many old tales, it can be viewed as a bit violent and sexist by today’s standards.  While this isn’t such an issue for older children who can understand it’s of its time, it can make it hard to tell to little ones.  With this in mind, we’ve created what we hope is a slightly more child-friendly version of the story.  We haven’t changed the core narrative, but we have retold it by:

  • making it clear that this particular dragon was dangerous and cruel;
  • empowering the princess to take part in deciding her own fate, rather than just being treated as an object for her father to give away as a prize in a male battle;
  • glossing over the violence of the fight between the dragon and George, which in many of the older stories is a bit gory and drawn out.

The PDF of our St George’s Story for Children is free to download and we hope you find it useful.

St George Activity Idea for Older Children:
If you are dealing with older rather than younger children, you could create a great learning activity by telling them a more adult version of the story and asking them how they would change it to tell to a younger child, or to suit a modern audience.

Other Activities:

This St George’s Day word search is another fun printable activity.  Just click/tap it to download the free PDF.

There are two more word searches below which are suitable for St George’s Day.

Halloween Ghosts

Looking for some ghosts to print out for Halloween?  Here’s our collection.  We hope you have fun decorating!

One great way to use all these different ghost characters is to thread them all along a string.  They look great!  Oh, and don’t forget that you can also use out blank ghost template to draw your own.

Rainbow Posters

Are you looking to show your support for the NHS or other key workers?  Great!  It’s lovely to see rainbows popping up in windows all over the UK, appreciating just how precious all our health workers are.  Here’s our little contribution – a collection of rainbow posters for children to print and colour in:

By the way, we think it’s really nice of you to think of others during this difficult time.  Your kindness is far more magical than anything we do on this site.

If you have a key worker among your friends or family, why not colour in a poster just for them? We’ve tried to include as many as we could think of, and there’s one you can fill in yourself if we’ve missed someone.

Looking for plain rainbow colouring without any writing? These are two of our favourites?

And here are two final posters which are key to that all-important message to stay home if you can:

Summer Seaside Colouring

It’s always fun for the children to do a bit of colouring in, so as summer gets going, (in the northern hemisphere anyway), we thought we’d post a collection of our printable seaside colouring pages:

Whether you’re after magical makebelieve like mermaids, or pictures of real ocean creatures such as the giant squid, we hope your family will enjoy colouring these beach and sea themed scenes.

Colouring for Spring

This is just a quick post to gather together all our favourite colouring pages for spring.  Great for those rainy afternoons with the children, though fingers crossed you won’t get too many!

Feeling musical this spring?  You might like these:

Along with colouring pages, you might also enjoy the following printables which are popular in spring:

Mermaid Certificates

Learning to Swim - free mermaid certificate
Learning to Swim

Our mermaid certificates are always popular in spring – though we’re never quite sure why!  Possibly it’s a time when children learn to swim.  Anyway, they’re also fun for children’s parties, oh, and we’ve got a mermaid invitations and a mermaid treasure hunt you can print too.

Pastel Alphabet Bunting

Perhaps it’s the soft spring colours that make our printable pastel alphabet bunting a popular download at this time of year.

Tooth Fairy Notes

Notes from the Tooth Fairy

These little notes from the Tooth fairy never stop being popular, no matter what the time of year. At the moment, they are among our top five most visited pages.

New Colouring Pages

Hello!  As you’ll know if you’re a regular visitor to this site, we add new printable colouring pages whenever we can.  Here are our latest offerings, many of which have been created with the upcoming season of autumn in mind.  We hope you find them useful and that if your children are heading back to school this September, they have a great term.

Latest Colouring Pages

Free colouring pages are scattered throughout our site so it can be hard to spot all the new ones.  That’s why this month, we thought we’d post a gallery of the latest colouring we’ve created here, in one place.  (We’ll try and do this every couple of months from now on.)  The pages below were all uploaded in Janaury 2016.  We hope you child enjoys colouring them in.

Pens or Crayons?

There’s always something of a debate as to what children most like to colour in with – pens or crayons.  It’s a tough call.  When I was little, I prefered crayons, as long as they were pencil crayons.  I hated wax.  Felt pens used to annoy me because I could never get an even colour onto the paper… I could always see darker bits and make out the pen lines.

With pencil crayons, however, you learn to shade.  You learn to press so lightly that you barely see the pencil lines.  You learn how to make colour fade or ger darker smoothly.  Sure, it takes patience and that may not be for everyone, (I’m not sure my sister ever delighted in these time-consuming things things), but there is a pleasure in learning to colour properly.  Even if you’re not the best at drawing, a beautifully shaded colouring page can look gorgeous, and feel very worthwhile.

Having said all that, felt pens can be fun too.  Plus, their strong, succulant colours might appeal to some children more than those of pencil crayons.  I guess in the end, the best way to make up your mind as to which to buy is to remember what you liked when you were little… then if in doubt, ask your child.