19 January Coloring Pages (Free Printable PDFs)

What fits January

January has two sides. It opens with a party and a fresh start, then it settles into cold days and early dark. We picked pages for both.

Start the month with the New Year group. On the party page, three friends in paper hats count down under a banner with a clock near midnight. The New Year fireworks burst over a clock tower while two friends watch from a snowy hill with a sparkler. The Happy New Year 2027 page has four giant foil balloons tied to a gift, with a rabbit and a puppy down below. The goals board shows a girl at her desk under six notes: Read, Be Kind, Play, Grow, Save and Try.

Snow takes over next. The building a snowman page has a kid reaching up beside a tall snowman, and the snowman family has a dad, a mom, a kid, a baby and a snow puppy. A girl sits on a bucket on the ice fishing page while four fish swim under the ice. The ice skates hang from a log rail above a frozen pond with three skaters.

For the days nobody wants to go out, there are the quiet pages. The cozy reading day has a girl in a huge armchair under a patchwork quilt, with a cat asleep on the arm. The hot chocolate mug has marshmallows, steam and cookies. Older kids and adults can take on the cozy cabin, which has glowing windows and a tiled roof under the stars.

January coloring pages for each age

• Ages 3 to 5: The snowman, the mittens and the polar bear have big, simple shapes. The penguin has a fuzzy chick to color next to it.
• Ages 5 to 8: The snow angel is drawn from straight above, which kids find funny. The winter hat and scarf has bands of small shapes and the words Stay Warm to fill.
• Ages 7 to 11: The party, the fireworks and the ice fishing pages each have more than one person and lots of small details.
• Ages 9 and up: The snowflake is a good test of a steady hand, with six arms made of diamonds and beads. The cabin is the longest job in this set.

Coloring snow, night and knits

Snow does not need much crayon. Leave most of it white, then add pale blue in the dips and along the bottom of each snowman ball. That small touch makes a snowman look round and makes a hill look soft. If you use a purple that is very light, the snow will seem colder still.

Fireworks need a dark sky to show up. Color each burst first with bright crayons, then fill in the sky around it with dark blue or purple. Press hard near the lines. Yellow and pink look best here, since they stay bright next to the dark color.

Knit patterns are a nice January challenge. The hat, the scarf and the mittens all have small rows of shapes, so pick two or three colors and repeat them. A pattern looks neat when you use the same order all the way across. Young kids can skip that and color each band in one color.

Warm rooms need warm colors. On the reading page and the cabin, yellow and orange in the windows and lamps will make the place feel cozy, even more so with cool blue snow outside.

The polar bear has the same problem as the snow. Give the sky behind it a strong blue so its white coat has an edge, then add pale gray under the belly. The penguin works the other way, with a dark back that makes the chick beside it look soft.

Printing for a monthly plan

This set works well for a monthly classroom plan. Print the full group once and you have enough sheets for most of the school days in January. Press Download all at the top of the page to get one file with every drawing. Press PDF on a card if you want just one. Pages fit US Letter paper, and on A4 you should turn on Fit to page. Press Color and a child can fill in a page on a phone, tablet or computer.

A simple order works well. Use the New Year pages in the first week, the snow play pages in the second, the animals in the third and the quiet pages to close out the month.

Cold weather animals on a map

Two of the easy pages hide a small geography lesson. The polar bear walks past an igloo, and the penguin stands on an ice floe with its chick. They look like neighbors, but polar bears live around the North Pole, and nearly all wild penguins live in the southern half of the world. The two would never meet outside of a zoo.

Cut out both animals and hold a globe or a world map near the table. Ask your child to tape the bear at the top and the penguin at the bottom. Then have them add the fish from the ice fishing page, which swim under a frozen lake. It is a quick way to show that cold places are not all the same place.

A New Year time capsule

The balloon page makes a sweet keepsake. After your child colors it, turn the sheet over and write down a few things about right now: their age, their best friend, a favorite food, a song they keep singing and what they want to be. Add a handprint in crayon if they will hold still. Fold it, write "Open next January" on the outside and tuck it into a drawer.

Next year, read it together before you start a new one. Kids find their old answers very funny, and you get a small record of the year. Our January 2027 calendar pairs well with this. Mark the day you sealed the page, then add snow days, birthdays and anything else worth keeping.

January activities

The goals board is a great first day back activity. Students color the six notes, then pick one and write a sentence about how they will do it. Save the pages and bring them back in June to see what happened.

At home, make a winter reading chart. Hang the reading day page on the fridge and add a sticker for each book you finish. On a snow day, color the sledding page and tell a story about where that sled ends up.

Kids can also use the snowflake for a lesson on symmetry. Count the arms, then fold a square of paper and cut one of your own. The snowman family makes a good writing prompt too, with each student naming the family and saying what they do once it warms up.

Every page is free for home and class under our free use license. You will find more cold weather drawings on our winter coloring pages, and when the month ends, move on to our February coloring pages.

Questions