About these tree coloring pages
Tree coloring pages follow the year better than almost any other theme. The same oak can be colored with fresh green leaves in spring, deep green in summer, red and gold in fall and bare, snowy branches in winter. Our free printable tree pages go from one big round tree with a trunk and a smiling sun for toddlers to detailed forests, gnarled old trunks, palm-lined shores and full family-tree templates for older kids and adults.
Every page prints on US Letter or A4 paper and can also be colored online with a tap-to-fill brush. Use tree coloring pages for a season lesson, a nature walk, Earth Day or Arbor Day, or simply for a calm half hour with a forest scene. While you color, talk about what trees give us: shade, homes for birds and squirrels, fruit, wood and the oxygen we breathe.
Kinds of trees on the pages
Broadleaf trees such as oaks, maples, apple trees and birches have wide, flat leaves and most of them drop those leaves in fall. Conifers such as pines, firs and spruces have needles and cones and stay green all winter. Palm trees grow in warm places and have a tall trunk with a crown of big fronds at the top.
Knowing the shape helps you color: a pine is a tall triangle of dark blue-green, a maple has a round crown that turns orange and red, a birch has a white trunk with black marks, and a weeping willow hangs down like a curtain of thin yellow-green lines.
Easy tree pages have one tree with a thick trunk and a round crown, so toddlers can fill it with two crayons in a few minutes. Medium pages add apples, birds, a swing or a tree house. Detailed pages show whole forests, roots winding over rocks or bark drawn line by line, and can keep an adult busy for an hour or more.
- Broadleaf: oak, maple, apple, cherry blossom, birch, willow
- Conifers: pine, fir, spruce, cedar, giant sequoia
- Warm climates: palm, baobab, banana, olive
One tree, four seasons
A favorite classroom activity is to print the same bare tree four times and color it once for each season: pink blossoms for spring, full green for summer, orange, red and yellow for fall, and white snow on the branches for winter. Children see right away that the tree is the same but the season changes everything around it.
For fall pages, mix at least three colors in the crown instead of filling it in one orange. Real autumn trees have green leaves left near the center, yellow ones in the middle and red ones on the outside where the sun reaches first.
Winter trees are a good lesson in using very few colors. A gray-brown trunk, white snow along the top of each branch and a pale blue sky are all a winter page needs, and the empty white paper does the rest.
Tree facts to share while you color
- You can tell the age of many trees by counting the rings inside the trunk: most grow one ring each year.
- Coast redwoods in California are the tallest trees on Earth; the tallest known one is about 116 meters (380 feet) high.
- The giant sequoia called General Sherman is the largest single tree in the world by volume.
- Some bristlecone pines in the mountains of California are more than 4,000 years old.
- Leaves turn yellow and orange in fall because the green chlorophyll breaks down and shows colors that were hidden underneath.
- The red in maple leaves is made fresh in the fall, which is why sunny autumn days give the brightest reds.
- Baobab trees store water in their thick trunks to survive long dry seasons, which is why their trunks look so wide compared with their short, bare-looking branches.
- Trees take in carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen as they make food from sunlight.
Which tree page for which age
- Toddlers (2–3)
- One big round tree with a thick trunk. A brown crayon for the trunk and a green one for the crown are enough.
- Preschool (3–5)
- Apple trees to count the apples, Christmas trees, and trees with a bird nest or a squirrel to find.
- Kids (5–10)
- Four-seasons trees, forests and tree houses. Good for learning leaf shapes and the names of common trees.
- Teens and adults
- Detailed bark, roots, forest scenes and family-tree templates. Try texture with short pencil strokes and several browns.
Coloring tips and color ideas
- Trunks are not plain brown: add gray, dark brown and a little green moss on the shady side.
- Color bark with short up-and-down strokes so it looks rough, not smooth.
- Use a lighter green on the side of the crown that faces the sun and a darker one on the other side.
- For fall trees, scatter yellow, orange and red instead of filling the whole crown in one color.
- Pines and firs look best in a dark blue-green, which also makes them look farther away in a forest.
- Color the sky before the leaves if you use markers, so the green does not smear into the blue.
Ideas for home, school and parties
- Season lesson: color the same tree four times and display the pages side by side on the wall.
- Nature walk: pick up leaves on a walk, then color a tree page using the same colors you found.
- Earth Day or Arbor Day: color a tree and write one way to take care of trees under the picture.
- Family tree project: fill a tree template with names and small drawings of grandparents, parents and children.
- Turn a photo of your favorite tree, park or backyard into a coloring page: upload it and Coloriki traces it in seconds.
How to print tree 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.