14 Funny Coloring Pages (Free Printable PDFs)

Read the signs first

Half the joke sits in the small print, so read each page with your child before anyone picks up a crayon. The hen on the chicken crossing the road page holds up one wing to stop a car and says the other side looks great. Her three chicks hurry along behind her. The sloth on a race track has a scoreboard that reads Day 3, Lap 1 of 1. The crowd has fallen asleep, and a snail is about to win.

School gets the same treatment. On the monsters at school page, the chalkboard says 2 eyes plus 1 eye makes 3 eyes, and the homework is to eat it. A kid who can read will spot that right away. The melting snowman stands by a sign that says Back Next Winter while a sun in sunglasses looks down, and the penguin at the beach sits in a cooler marked Keep Cold with an ice cream dripping in one flipper.

Big patients, tiny helpers

Several drawings use one simple gag: a huge, nervous animal and a very small expert. The bear has a Brush After Honey poster on the wall behind its chair. The dog at the barber stares up at the scissors while a cat on a stool trims a tower of fluff, and the sign says Today: Fluff Cut. On the giraffe with a sore neck page, a little bird doctor climbs a ladder to reach a bandaged neck, and the giraffe says ouch.

The shark brushing teeth needs no helper at all, just a mirror on the sea floor and a tube of mint toothpaste. Over at the tub, the pig in a bubble bath sings into a scrub brush while a rubber duck covers its ears. If a first dentist visit or haircut is coming up, one of these can start a light chat about it.

The rest are pure silliness. The cow on a skateboard flies off a ramp in a helmet and knee pads as two hens hold up perfect tens. The llama in sunglasses has a guinea pig in matching shades on its head. For a softer laugh, the kawaii school supplies give a pencil, a ruler and a glue bottle huge shiny eyes.

Keep an eye on the side characters

The big animal gets the laugh first, but the small helpers often steal the page. A worried mouse hangs on in the back seat of the tabby's open top car. It clearly did not agree to this trip. Two hens sit on a hay bale to judge the cow, and a tiny iceberg floats far away behind the hot penguin, just out of reach. A frog has moved into the snowman's puddle as if it were a new pool.

Try a page where only the side character gets a bright color. Leave the cow pale and make the two hens bright red. Your eye goes right to them. Then ask your child who has the worst day on each sheet. Most kids vote for the mouse, though the guinea pig on the llama's head has a good case too.

Funny coloring pages by age

• Ages 3 to 5: Start with the pig. The tub, the foam and the big pink body are easy shapes to fill, and a grown-up can read the joke out loud.
• Ages 4 to 7: The llama, the cat in the car and the penguin each have one large animal with a few props around it.
• Ages 7 to 10: Try the monsters at school. Each student has a different body, so there is a lot to plan.
• Ages 10 to 12: The sloth race has rows of sleeping fans and a checkered finish line. It takes more time and a sharp tip.

Color for a bigger laugh

A joke often gets funnier when the color is wrong on purpose. Nobody says the pig has to be pink. A green pig singing in a purple tub is much harder to ignore, and a cow with rainbow spots looks right at home on a skateboard. Let your child break the rules on the animal, then keep the room or the road normal so the odd color stands out.

Protect the faces. Most of the humor is in the eyes, so keep the whites of the eyes clean and press lightly near them. The bear and the dog both look worried, and the drop on the bear's face can go pale blue.

Words need pale colors. Leave speech bubbles and signs white, or use soft yellow, so nobody loses the punch line under dark crayon. Foam and fluff work the same way. Leave the pig's bubbles and the dog's big puff of hair mostly white, then add a little pale blue or gray along the bottom edge to make them look round.

Heat and cold are fun to play with too. Give the penguin a hot orange sky and it will look even more unhappy about the trip. On the snowman page, a bright yellow sun and a clear blue puddle tell the whole story.

Print a few or print them all

Press PDF on any card for one sheet. Press Download all at the top of this page for a single file with the whole set, one drawing to a sheet. The pages fit US Letter paper, and A4 users can select Fit to page. The Color button lets a child fill in a drawing on a phone, tablet or computer. Marker users should put a spare sheet underneath, since thin paper lets ink through.

The oldest joke in the set

The chicken page comes from a riddle many kids hear early on. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Our hen has a suitcase and three chicks, so she may have better reasons. Ask your child to write a new answer on a sticky note and press it near the road. Perhaps the other side has better worms, or she is off to visit her sister.

Reading the signs out loud works well for a child who is just starting to read. Words like Tuna, Lap and Fluff are short and easy to sound out, and a joke gives them a reason to try.

More laughs at home and in class

Run a caption contest. Cover a sign or speech bubble with a strip of paper and let kids write a new line. What is the rubber duck thinking? What does the mouse say to the bear? Read the best ones at dinner or at the end of the school day.

For a writing task, ask students what happens next. Does the sloth ever finish? Does the penguin make it home? Three sentences on the back of the page is plenty. Math fans can copy the monster chalkboard and make up their own eye problems.

You can also staple five or six colored pages into a joke book, with one joke your child wrote on each back side. Teachers can use these freely in class, and our free use license explains the simple rules. Want more critters? See our animal coloring pages or the softer cute coloring pages.

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