On the morning of January 1st, my living room looks like a party ended and nobody stayed to sweep. Pine needles in the rug, a balloon sagging behind the couch, wrapping paper still under a chair, somebody in tears over the last candy cane.
Two days later I want the reverse… a cleared table, sharpened pencils and a little calm before the school bus starts showing up again. That’s the gap these January coloring pages fill, with snowy owls, a frozen lake and a robin, and not one strand of tinsel.
↓ Scroll to the free printable pagesEvery page below was drawn by our team for the stretch after the holidays, when the decorations are boxed up but winter clearly isn’t. So you’ll find printable coloring pages for January that suit wobbly toddler grips and patient big kids alike.
Scroll the grid, pick a few, print them. I’d start with the robin, but that’s just me.
Featured January Coloring Pages
I love how this little fox makes trudging through deep January snow look like a grand adventure instead of a chilly chore. I’d reach for a bright orange crayon for that fluffy tail and leave plenty of snowy white around those busy paws.
I think these ruffly carnations are such a cheerful way to celebrate a January birthday, especially with a few pinks and purples mixed in. I’d leave the bouquet out with a handful of crayons and let the kids dream up their own winter-blooming rainbow.
I love the idea of coloring one book in this stack after each January read. It’s a sweet little way to watch those reading adventures add up. I’d keep a few crayons tucked beside the bedtime books, because picking the next spine’s color might become as exciting as choosing the next story!
I love how the snowy January sign makes this little igloo feel like the first stop on a winter adventure. I’d leave some snow white and add pale blue shadows, though a rainbow igloo would certainly brighten a chilly day!
This little seal has the right idea for January: find a comfy patch of ice and leave the rushing around to someone else. I’d try pale blue shadows on the ice, though a few rainbow spots would make this sleepy friend look ready for a party.
I’d leave this snowy owl mostly white and let the January blizzard swirl around it in soft blues and lilacs. There’s something rather lovely about making a frosty scene while everyone’s tucked up warm at the kitchen table!
I love how these chunky ice blocks turn January into a frosty little building project, with plenty of room for pale blues and snowy whites. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone at our kitchen table decided rainbow ice was much more fun!
Did you love these January pages?
Winter Collections
January Coloring Pages Highlights
Garden With a Robin
A plump robin sits right on the snowy cap of the biggest flower pot, with bare twigs behind it and a leafy plant poking up from a taller pot. Up front, a smaller third pot holds a tiny sprout.
I like that this is a garden in the wrong season. Plants hanging on, a bird keeping watch, snow heaped on every rim. It’s a sweet pick for a preschool chat about what survives the cold, and the round pot shapes are easy for small hands.
Moon Over a Frozen Lake
A full moon with little craters hangs over rolling hills, with pine trees on both shores and a sky dotted with stars and puffy clouds. The lake itself is cracked into dozens of wavy ice plates.
Those plates are the reason to print it. Of all the color pages January has to offer here, this one eats up the most time, because older kids want every slab in its own shade of blue or gray. Lovely before bed, too.
Bare Trees and a Frozen Creek
Two bare trees lean over a winding frozen creek, and a trail of tiny three-toed bird tracks runs along its bank. Around the edges sit a few smooth stones and tufts of dry grass.
Quieter than the animal pages, and that’s no complaint. Nature-journal kids and classrooms doing a winter walk unit will get the most from it. Pair it with a real walk outside if the weather cooperates.
Reading Challenge Book Stack
Five chunky books pile up into a tower, each with a blank cover and its pages drawn as neat lines along the side. Snowflakes drift around the stack, and a big snowflake shape with a round middle glows in the top corner.
The page is built for a winter reading goal, and I think that’s clever, because it doubles as the tracker. Teachers, this one belongs on a bulletin board by the second week back.
Undated Calendar With a Mitten Border
Right in the middle sits a plain grid, with a blank title box on top, four heart-patterned mittens in the corners and a ring of hearts around the edges. No dates are printed anywhere.
That’s handy, since you can number it for any year. Out of the January coloring sheets in the set, this is the one that stays on the fridge for a whole month. Kids who love counting will want to write the numbers in themselves.
Penguin Holding a January Sign
Round-bellied and huge-eyed, a penguin with a tiny tuft on his head holds up a sign that says “January Coloring Page” in fat bubble letters. That month on the sign is named for Janus, the Roman god of doorways, who had two faces, one looking back at the old year and one looking ahead.
Big shapes, almost no fiddly bits. Among the cute January coloring pages here, this is the easiest win for a three-year-old, and the sign gives early readers a few letters to sound out.
Polar Bear Building a Snow Letter J
Standing on his back legs, a grinning polar bear hugs a lowercase j made of packed snow, snowball dot and all. Lumpy snow mounds sit around his feet.
Alphabet page, winter page, January page. Three jobs, one sheet. It slots right into a preschool or kindergarten letter week, and the bear’s open shape leaves plenty of room for chunky crayons.
Snowy City Street With Lampposts
Snow sits on the rooftops of a row of tall city houses, and the street curves away past old-fashioned lampposts that shrink as they go. There’s an arched front door, a few bushes and a pine tree tucked between the buildings.
This is the grown-up end of the set, with lots of windows and a bit of perspective to figure out. Sam took one look and drew a garbage truck parked at the curb, about forty seconds flat. The street needed traffic, apparently.
Tips for Coloring January Scenes
Pick Which Robin Is Visiting
The robin in the snowy garden could be an American robin, with a brick-orange breast and a gray-brown back. Or it could be a European robin, whose orange covers the face and chest, edged with a soft gray border.
Decide before you start, since the orange lands in different places. And the old line about the first robin meaning spring is shaky, because plenty of American robins stay in snowy states all winter, switching from worms to berries and keeping out of sight.
Give the Clay Pots a Winter Crack
Color the three garden pots terracotta orange, pressing a little harder along the rolled rims. Real terracotta soaks up water, and when that water freezes it expands, which is why gardeners empty clay pots or haul them inside before January.
So add one thin, jagged crack to the biggest pot with a brown pencil. No robin will mind, and kids love a detail they invented themselves.
Color the Wolf Moon by Its Height
January’s full moon is traditionally called the Wolf Moon, a name the Old Farmer’s Almanac helped popularize. Near the horizon a moon looks butter yellow or even orange because its light crosses more air, and once it climbs high it turns silvery white.
On the frozen lake page the moon sits well above the hills, so keep it pale, with a whisper of gray pencil in the craters. If your kid wants a rising moon instead, color it warm yellow and lay a faint yellow stripe across the nearest ice plates.
Let the Creek Freeze From the Banks
Creeks freeze from the edges inward, because water moves slowest along the banks and fastest down the middle. That’s why the ice near stones and grass is thickest, while the center can keep running for weeks.
Run a pale band of white-blue crayon hugging both banks of the creek, then fill the middle with a deeper blue pencil for moving water. Press lightly where the two meet so the edge looks soft, like ice that’s still creeping outward.
Two-Tone Boots on the Pattern Page
Both boots on the mitten pattern page have a thick treaded sole and a separate upper, which begs for two colors. In 1912 a Maine hunter named Leon Leonwood Bean stitched leather tops onto rubber bottoms, and 90 of his first 100 pairs came back when the stitching failed.
He refunded every pair and fixed the design, and the boot is still sold today. Color the boot bottoms chocolate brown in waxy crayon for a rubbery shine and the uppers tan in colored pencil so the two materials look different.
Tint the Weekends on the Calendar
This coming January starts on a Friday, so if your weeks begin on Sunday, the first five boxes of the top row stay empty. Number the grid in pencil before any color goes down, because erasing through crayon gets ugly.
Then tint the first and last columns, Sunday and Saturday, in one pale color. Piano keys work the same way, black ones grouped in twos and threes so a pianist finds her place without looking, and kids will spot the weekends just as fast.
Finish the J With Its Tittle
A lowercase j’s dot has a name, a tittle, and on the polar bear page it’s a snowball. J is often called the newest letter in the alphabet, which is only half true, since it began as a curly i and U split off around the same era.
Leave the stem snow white and save the tittle for last, in whatever bright crayon your kid picks. After that, have them pencil their own initial into the empty snow by the bear’s feet, because few coloring pages for January sneak in handwriting practice this easily.
Amber Pools Under the Lampposts
Old city lamps glowed a warm orange, first from gas and later from sodium bulbs, while most new street lights are LEDs with a cooler white. Pick a decade for your snowy street before you touch the lantern glass.
For the old-fashioned version, press a soft amber circle onto the sidewalk snow under each lamppost, smaller and lighter as the lamps march down the curve. Like runway lights guiding a plane in at night, those little pools show the eye exactly where the street bends.