Free Halloween Colouring Pages - and Why Friendly Beats Frightening
Printables
6 free Halloween colouring pages for ages 2 to 7 - a smiling pumpkin, a friendly ghost, a bat, a cat and a spider's web. Nothing spooky, everything printable.
Halloween is a strange week to be small. The evenings go dark, the doorbell keeps ringing, and suddenly everyone is wearing somebody else's face. It is exciting and unsettling in the same breath, and a lot of it might be too much for a three-year-old.
So the Halloween pictures I have made are the friendly half of the season. There is a pumpkin with an enormous grin. There is a ghost who only says hello. There is a cat who is frankly asleep. You can download all six pages here - free, no signup, and yours to photocopy.
What is inside
- The cover - a moon, two bats and a smiling pumpkin, with a line for their name
- The pumpkin - a big jack-o'-lantern with a happy face and plenty of open space to colour
- The friendly ghost - "boo" is ghost for hello
- The bat - out for a moonlit fly, with three stars to count
- The cat - a calm cat on the step, with whiskers to colour and a tail to finish
- The web and goodnight - a spider's web, a spider who is smiling, and a line to sign
Why friendly, on purpose
I taught kindergarten and I watched what a scary picture does to a small child at the end of a long day. It doesn’t make them brave. It makes them want the lights left on.
A picture that is almost spooky, on the other hand, does something useful: it lets a child practise being bold. A pumpkin with a grin is not frightening, but it is a face with sharp teeth, and colouring it gives them a taste of the thrilling part of Halloween without any of the fright. That is the whole idea. Give them the fun of the dark, and keep the dark out of it.
The practical bit
Print one page at a time rather than all six, and let them choose. These work as well at a party table as they do on a wet Tuesday, and they are the quietest possible thing to hand a child who has had too much sugar and not enough dinner.
Colouring is also doing real work while their hands are busy: grip, control, moving left to right, and the naming of colours and shapes out loud. I wrote about that properly in why colouring helps early reading.
If you want a pumpkin-coloured afternoon to go with it, there are 25 easy baking recipes for kids as well.
And if the season has your little one asking for stories about brave animals rather than witches, both of my picture books are gentle on purpose: Cuddles Loses His Home and Penny and the Silver Stream.
One more thing for the grown-ups
Halloween is a lot of work, and most of it lands on whoever is holding the doorbell and the sweets at the same time. If that is you, keep one page back for the hour after bedtime. A quiet table, a cup of tea, and a spider's web to colour in is a decent way to end the day.
Free to download, free to photocopy, no barcode hiding on it anywhere.