How to Make a Winter Themed Coloring Book for Kids

Winter days mean kids are often stuck inside on snow days and weekends. Short of allowing them to play video-games all day, keeping them active can be challenging. Most young children enjoy coloring, and getting a personalized book made from a favorite family member can make an afternoon coloring event into an extra special affair. Making a coloring book is easy, and allows the creator to focus the theme of the pictures to something that the little artist can be especially excited about. Winter time is full of special images and including specific cold weather animals and winter sports in your coloring book helps keep kids thinking of the great things about the season. With a little computer know-how and some desktop publishing software you can easily make a fun coloring book for the kids in your life. Here’s how.

Things You'll Need

• Ink jet printer
• Microsoft Word
• Adobe Photoshop
• Black permanent marker
• Hole punch
• Yarn
• Crayons
• Winter related images

Instructions

High Tech Coloring Book

1. Open Adobe Photoshop.

2. Open winter related images you find online or from your own photo collection.

3. 

   Go to "Image" at the top toolbar, then "Mod"e and slide over to "Grayscale." This reduces your image to black and gray and simplifies it for coloring.

4. 

   Next, go to "Filters," "Stylize" and then select "Find Edges" to make your image into a line drawing.

5. Print the new image from Adobe, or save it as a Jpeg. file and open in Word to print.

6. Repeat this process using other images. Provide a mix of pictures for kids to color including some winter animal pictures, holiday related images and winter sports. Continue creating pictures for your coloring book until you have about 20.

7. Personalize the coloring book by creating a cover page that features the child’s name.

8. Punch a hole at the top left corner of all the pages and tie together with a piece of yarn.

9. Gift along with a fresh box of crayons.

Low Tech Coloring Book.

1. Find winter related images in magazines.

2. Put a piece of paper over the image and trace the outline of the subject matter with a black permanent marker.

3. If you have a little artistic talent, draw simple line drawings of winter sports or animals for the children to color in.

4. Finish off the book as described in Section 1 and gift.

Tips & Warnings

• Be sure to make another identical book for any siblings so that there is no fighting.

• Be sure images are age appropriate and that coloring areas are large enough for small hands to color in.