Christmas colouring pages and crafts

Pick the right sheet for the child

The instinct is to hand over the most impressive looking page, and for anyone under about five that is exactly the wrong one.

Simple, for roughly three to six. The snowman, the reindeer, and both robins. Big shapes, thick outlines, lots of open space. A hand that cannot yet be precise still gets a result worth putting on the fridge, and a result worth putting on the fridge is what makes them start a second one.

Detailed, for roughly seven and up. The elves workshop, the carol singers, the snowball fight and Father Christmas delivering presents. These are proper line work with a lot going on, and they will take an afternoon. A fair number of adults quietly prefer them.

Somewhere in the middle. The tree, the nativity and the three wise men. Usable from about five with a bit of patience, and still interesting at nine.

The gingerbread chain is the one worth doing

It is the only craft here that produces a genuine moment, because nothing about a folded strip of paper suggests what is about to happen when you open it out.

Cut out the whole strip. Fold along every dotted line, forwards then backwards, like a fan. Keep it folded, cut around the gingerbread man, and do not cut the folds where his hands are. That last part is the bit children get wrong once and never get wrong again.

The hands run right out to the fold lines on purpose, which is why they stay joined. Two strips print on each sheet, and taping a few together makes a chain long enough to go across a window.

Paper chains, the old fashioned sort

Fourteen strips, five patterns, all waiting to be coloured. Cut along the lines, loop one strip through the last one and glue the ends.

Thin paper is better here. Card looks sturdier and is a nuisance to loop, and the glue takes longer to hold.

It is a good job for a child who wants to help decorate but is too small to be trusted near the tree, and it uses almost no ink.

The cards fold to a real size

Each card prints on A4 landscape with the design on the right half. Colour the front, then fold down the dotted line with the printed side facing out, and you have an A5 card that fits an ordinary envelope. The inside is blank paper, which is where the message goes.

Print these on card if you have it. A paper Christmas card arrives looking like a piece of paper.

About the mask

Card, not paper. Colour it first, cut round the outside, then cut the eyes out, which is the bit an adult usually needs to do.

Tape a lolly stick to the back and hold it up, which suits younger children, or make a small hole either side and thread elastic through. The stick version survives longer.

Keeping the ink bill down

Everything on this page is black line art on white. There is no colour information in any of it, so set the printer to black ink only and nothing is lost.

That makes these the cheapest sheets on the site to run off in a month when the colour cartridge is already under strain. The ink saving guide covers the settings worth changing.

For the parent end of Christmas rather than the children’s end, the Christmas planning sheets cover the budget, the presents and the food.