About these fall coloring pages
Fall coloring pages capture the coziest season of the year: maple and oak leaves drifting down, pumpkins in a patch, apples in a basket, squirrels with acorns, scarecrows in a field, owls on a branch and kids jumping into a pile of leaves. Our free printable fall pages include single leaves and acorns for toddlers, harvest and forest scenes for school-age kids and detailed autumn mandalas for teens and adults.
Print them on US Letter or A4 paper, or color them online. Fall pages fit right between the first weeks of school, apple picking, Halloween and Thanksgiving, and they last all season on a classroom wall or the fridge, whether you call it fall or autumn.
Bring the outdoors in
Fall is the best season for a nature walk with a coloring page in mind. Collect a few leaves on the way, then at home match each real leaf to the one on the page: the maple with its pointed lobes, the oak with its rounded ones. Kids can copy the real colors, which are rarely just orange. Look closely and you will see yellow, red, purple, brown and green on a single leaf.
Older kids can lay a real leaf under a sheet of paper and rub a crayon over it to make a leaf rubbing, then color a detailed leaf page next to it and compare. Teachers use fall pages for a lesson on why leaves change color and why some animals store food for the winter.
Fall pages also help bridge the season's holidays. Pumpkins and scarecrows work for October, turkeys and harvest tables for November, and plain leaves and apples for the whole stretch from September to the first snow.
Fall pictures to color
Each of these has something to teach about the season.
A simple way to explore them is a "fall basket": print one page of each symbol, let kids color them over a week, then cut them out and fill a paper basket on the wall. Ask a question for each one as it goes in. Why do squirrels bury acorns? Where do the geese go? What can we make with apples? Younger children learn the words; older ones can write one sentence on the back of each picture.
- Falling leaves: trees drop their leaves to save water and energy for winter
- Pumpkins: harvested in fall and carved or baked into pies
- Apples: picked from orchards from late summer through fall
- Squirrels and acorns: squirrels bury nuts to eat when food is scarce
- Scarecrows: placed in fields to keep birds away from the crops
- Geese flying south: many birds migrate to warmer places for the winter
Fall facts to share while you color
- In the Northern Hemisphere, fall begins with the autumn equinox around September 22 or 23.
- Americans usually say "fall" and people in the United Kingdom usually say "autumn"; both are correct.
- Leaves turn yellow and orange when they stop making green chlorophyll, which lets colors hidden in the leaf show through.
- Red and purple leaves get their color from pigments the tree makes in the fall, especially after sunny days and cool nights.
- Squirrels forget where they buried some of their nuts, and a few of those nuts grow into new trees.
- Monarch butterflies from eastern North America fly thousands of miles to spend the winter in the mountains of Mexico.
- Geese often fly in a V shape, which helps them save energy on long trips.
- The full moon closest to the autumn equinox is called the harvest moon.
Which fall page for which age
- Toddlers (2–3)
- One big leaf, an apple, an acorn or a pumpkin with thick lines. Give them orange, red and yellow crayons and let them mix.
- Preschool (3–5)
- Leaves to count and color in different shades, smiling scarecrows, squirrels and apple trees.
- Kids (5–10)
- Pumpkin patches, forest animals getting ready for winter, kids raking leaves and harvest scenes with barns. They can match each leaf on the page to a real one from the yard.
- Teens and adults
- Detailed leaf mandalas, autumn forest landscapes and still lifes of pumpkins, apples and gourds, made for a cup of tea on a rainy October afternoon.
Coloring tips and color ideas
- Use a warm autumn palette: rust, gold, burgundy, burnt orange and chocolate brown.
- Color a single leaf in two or three colors, blending yellow at the stem into red at the tips.
- Draw the veins of a leaf a little darker than the rest so they stand out.
- Give the sky a soft gray-blue for a crisp fall day, or orange and pink for an early sunset.
- Color pumpkins with a darker orange in the grooves and a small white shine on top.
- Glue a few real pressed leaves around the edge of the finished page as a frame.
Ideas for home, school and parties
- Leaf garland: cut out colored leaves and hang them across a mantel or a classroom door.
- Nature journal: match each page to a leaf found outside and write where you found it.
- Seasonal door sign: write "Welcome fall" with the free quote maker, color it and hang it on the front door.
- Classroom tree: a paper trunk on the wall, with every student adding a colored leaf with their name and one thing they like about fall.
- A family fall coloring book: upload photos from apple picking or the pumpkin patch and Coloriki turns them into a book to color together.
How to print fall coloring pages
- Open the page you like and press Print it. A PDF opens, sized for US Letter; the A4 PDF is next to it.
- In the print window choose "Fit to page" or 100% scale, and plain white paper. Thicker paper (100 to 120 gsm) is better for markers and paint.
- Print a few copies: kids like to try different colors on the same picture.
- Prefer screens? Press Color it online and color with a tap on a phone, tablet or computer.