Who decided the busiest month of the year should also get the shortest days? Nobody, sadly, just the tilt of the planet, and the tilt doesn’t take complaints (believe me, I’ve filed a few).
By four in the afternoon the sky is done for, and the kitchen fills up with restless people in socks who still have a whole day’s worth of energy to burn. That’s where December coloring pages earn their keep, spread across the table with a cup of crayons in the middle.
↓ Scroll to the free printable pagesBelow is a big collection of December coloring sheets, from chunky and sweet to properly fiddly. A sleepy penguin shares the grid with a snowy village that has more windows than I managed to count before my coffee went cold.
Our team drew every one of them in-house, and each opens as a free PDF. Scroll through the December coloring sheets and pick whatever suits your crowd this week.
Featured December Coloring Pages
I’d give this cozy sweater cranberry-red cuffs and a soft green pattern, with December standing out in a cheerful golden yellow. All those little knitted details make me want to grab my pencils and ignore the actual laundry for a bit!
I love how the little mittens make this snowy December mandala feel cozy, like a woolly hug for all those snowflakes. I’d try frosty blues with a few bright red mittens, though rainbow mittens are always welcome at my table!
This sleepy fox tucked beneath a snowy pine makes me wish December came with a little more time for naps. I’d give its fluffy tail a warm orange glow and let the kids dress up the December letters in whatever festive colors take their fancy.
I’d give this little fox and hare just a whisper of pale blue on their snowy coats, then let the December sky swirl with pinks and greens. Something about these two under the northern lights makes me imagine they’ve sneaked out past bedtime for the best light show of the year.
That sled propped against the fence looks ready for a snow day, and I’d be tempted to give it a bright red coat. The December lettering leaves room for a little rainbow fun. Winter doesn’t have to be all blue and white!
I’d leave this snowy owl mostly white and let the December sky do the showing off with deep blues and a soft glow around the moon. That quiet perch on the branch makes me think this little night owl has finally found five minutes of peace!
This little town getting its first December dusting makes me want to dig out the mittens and put the kettle on. I’d leave the snow soft and white, then let the kids give every house a cheerful front door. Purple would definitely make an appearance at our table.
Did you love these December pages?
Winter Collections
December Coloring Pages Highlights
Reading Corner With Books, a Mug and a Blanket
Here’s a room waiting for somebody to come back. An armchair with a fat pillow, a checked blanket slung across it, and a little round table holding a stack of books and a mug with a heart on the side.
Out the window you get snowy pines and falling snow, while a wreath with a bow hangs on the wall. Older kids who like lots of small, straight-edged spaces will be happy with the window panes and the blanket checks. For the half hour before bed, it beats anything with a penguin on it.
Weather Chart With Snowy, Cloudy and Sunny Days
Teachers, this one’s for you. A puffy cloud in a bobble hat sits above a three-column chart, with snowflakes falling from a cloud on the left, a cluster of clouds in the middle and a rayed sun on the right.
My classroom had a weather helper at morning meeting, and that job got fought over harder than line leader ever did. If you need December coloring pages printable for a calendar board, this is the obvious pick. Kids color the column that matches the sky outside and debate whether “a bit of sun” counts.
Winter Clothes Checklist With Boots, Hat and Scarf
Three empty boxes run down the side of a clipboard. Next to them sit a bobble hat, a fringed scarf and a pair of boots, with little pines on either side and a snowflake up in the corner.
And yes, it’s a coloring page that does a job. Preschoolers still working on crayon grip can fill the big, plain shapes without frustration.
Long Winter Night Over a Snowy Village
Stars everywhere. Big ones, tiny ones, a crescent moon tucked in the corner, and underneath it all a village with snow on every roof and a tall steeple in the middle. A path wanders down from the houses toward the bottom edge.
Give this to the kid who likes chipping away at small spaces one at a time, because the windows alone take a while. It also fits the solstice, the longest night of the year, which lands around December 21.
Arctic Fox and Snowy Hare Under Northern Lights
An arctic fox and a snowy hare sit side by side in the snow while ribbons of northern lights roll over a ridge of mountains. Neither looks the least bit nervous about the other, which, knowing what real foxes eat… let’s not.
Just two animals and a huge sky, so the page never feels crowded. Anyone six and up tends to go wild on the lights, and the rounded animal shapes are easy enough for a younger sibling to help with.
Penguin Ice Skating With December in Its Skate Trails
Look at the ice first. The skate trail curls into the word “december” in looping cursive, like this penguin has been practicing the same move since breakfast.
He’s balanced on one skate in a bobble hat and scarf, flippers out, with pines and clouds behind him. Second and third graders who are just learning cursive love finding where the word starts. I think it beats any penmanship worksheet I ever handed out.
Polar Bear Cub Catching Snowflakes
A polar bear cub sits in the snow with one paw stretched up toward the falling flakes. One foot faces you, round pads and all, and pines fill in the background.
Little kids who want cute December coloring pages they can actually finish should start here. Lily held hers up to the window afterward so the bear could see the real snow. No arguing with that logic.
Snowy Cabin With December on a Wooden Sign
Snow sits heavy on the roof of this log cabin, and a brick chimney pokes up through it. Planted out front, a wooden sign spells DECEMBER in big block letters.
Those stacked logs give kids a run of long stripes to fill, which is oddly soothing. Honestly, it would make a decent cover for a December journal or the front of a classroom calendar.
8 Tips for Coloring December Scenes
Trace the Penguin’s Cursive in One Go
The penguin wrote “december” in one unbroken loop, so trace it the same way, pencil down on the d and not lifted again until the r. A silver or light gray colored pencil looks most like scraped ice.
A fly rod cast works the same way, one long rolling loop of line, and if you stop halfway it slaps onto the water in a heap. Even kids who groan at handwriting practice don’t groan at this.
Earthshine for the Crescent Moons
Crescents show up over the village, the owl and the blanket penguin, and on a real crescent moon the dark part often glows faintly. Astronomers call that glow earthshine, sunlight bouncing off Earth onto the moon, and Leonardo da Vinci worked it out in his notebooks around 500 years ago.
Color the crescent pale lemon, then sketch the rest of the circle in soft blue-gray with almost no pressure. While you’re at it, check which way each moon curves, since the old rule says a D shape is growing and a C is shrinking (north of the equator, anyway).
Sunset Colors for the DECEMBER Bubble Letters
Early December brings the earliest sunsets of the year across much of the Northern Hemisphere, around 4:30 in New York and a couple of weeks before the solstice. Which means the bubble letters floating in the clouds on the mountain page are begging for sunset colors.
Each of the eight letters gets its own step, deep orange on the D, then apricot, coral, rose, pink, mauve, lavender and pale lilac on the R. Keep the mountains and pines below plain so the sky gets all the attention.
Holly for the Reading Corner Wreath
December has two traditional birth flowers, holly and narcissus, which makes the wreath above the armchair a natural spot for holly. Actual holly leaves are a deep, almost black green, and layering dark green over a thin coat of navy gets you there.
Dot a few red berries between the leaves with a fine marker. Match the bow to the blanket and the corner looks like somebody planned it.
Up-and-Down Strokes for the Northern Lights
Real auroras often hang like curtains, with thin vertical rays running through them because the light lines up with Earth’s magnetic field. Over the fox and hare the lights are drawn as smooth wavy bands, but your strokes can add the rays.
Inside each band, color in short up-and-down strokes instead of side to side, in any colors you like. Leave a few skinny white gaps between the strokes and the ribbons start to flicker.
A Blue Spruce Over the Sleeping Fox
Shade the big tree over the sleeping fox blue-green and it turns into a Colorado blue spruce, a popular Christmas tree. Its silvery blue comes from a waxy coating on the needles, a lot like the chalky bloom you can rub off a fresh blueberry from the store.
Start with a light teal pencil, then go over it once with pale gray, barely touching the paper, to fake the wax. But keep the fox a warm orange so it doesn’t disappear into all that cool color.
Match the Checklist to the Real Closet
Before anyone starts the clothes checklist, pull the real hat, scarf and boots out of the closet. They color each item to match their own, stripes and pom-pom and all, so the page shows their actual gear.
Years of kindergarten cubbies taught me that kids dress faster when they can see the steps. Tape it by the door at kid height and let them tick each box on the way out.
A Southern December for the Blanket Penguin
In Antarctica, December is the middle of summer for wild penguins. South of the Antarctic Circle the sun doesn’t set at all around the solstice, so a December “night” there is bright.
Print two copies, one with a deep navy northern sky and one with a pale gold southern glow, and let your kid decide whether the penguin still needs that blanket. Coloring pages for December almost always assume long dark nights, so it’s fun to flip that around once.