Easy color by number
11 first color-code pages selected for broad shapes and short keys: sleepy cats and capybaras, a tulip, an apple and a few autumn pictures.
11 printable sheets ·
Checked and published by 
Nora Quill
Easy animals
Chunky capybara, sitting capybara, sleeping cat, two cat friends and a chunky butterfly. The capybaras and the cat each have 7 regions, and the chunky capybara needs only a 2-color key, mostly brown. Two cat friends goes up to 12 regions and the butterfly to 14, both on 4-color keys with pink doing most of the work.
Easy flowers and fruit
A tulip, a red apple and a smiling daffodil. The tulip is the shortest sheet on the page, 4 regions from a 3-color key with dark green used twice. The apple has 5 regions and 4 colors. The daffodil is the long one in this group at 14 regions, with yellow filling 7 of them, a useful bridge toward medium sheets.
Easy autumn pictures
Maple leaves, a smiling autumn leaf and a whole pumpkin pie, every one on a 4-color key. The maple leaves have 10 regions and use white most often. The smiling leaf has 11, six of them red. The pumpkin pie, with 16 regions and orange in 7, is the busiest picture in the easy collection.
Short keys, broad shapes
Every one of the 11 pictures here uses a key of four colors or fewer, and the region count runs from 4 to 16. That is the clearest difference from the other color by number pages, where keys reach seven colors or more. A short key means a child holds fewer number and color pairs in mind at once, and the large regions leave room for a crayon to stay inside the line. Each numeral sits at the widest point of its region, sized to fit. Tiny details like eye sparkles are plain lines with no number, so there's nothing to guess.
Who the easy pages are for
Children who are just learning to match a digit with a crayon, and anyone who wants a first color by number without a long sitting. The keys only use the digits 1 to 4, so a child who recognizes those four numerals can work alone. The tulip, with 4 regions, is short enough for a first try at the kitchen table.
How do I choose the easiest sheet to start with?
Look at the two numbers on each card: regions and key colors. The tulip has 4 regions and 3 colors, and the red apple 5 regions and 4 colors, so both finish quickly. The chunky capybara needs only a 2-color key. Leave the pumpkin pie, with 16 regions, and the daffodil and butterfly, with 14 each, for a second session.
Animals, flowers and fruit, or autumn
The animal group is the natural starting point: two capybaras and a sleeping cat each have 7 regions, then two cat friends and a chunky butterfly add more. The flowers and fruit group runs from the 4-region tulip to the 14-region smiling daffodil. The autumn group is the busiest, with maple leaves, a smiling leaf and a pumpkin pie between 10 and 16 regions, all on 4-color keys.
Next steps, and printing at home
When these feel easy, the full color by number collection adds medium and hard sheets with more regions, and animal color by number has more cats, capybaras and butterflies at higher counts. For a different first puzzle, the dot to dot page starts at about 22 dots. Print at actual size; the A4 file carries a 15 mm margin, so it also fits US Letter. Black and white is fine because the key writes each color in words. The colored picture is the last page of the PDF.
How to use these sheets
- Pick a sheet and press Print. The file is a PDF sized for A4 and Letter paper.
- Print it in black and white at normal quality. None of these sheets need colour ink except the colour by number pages.
- Keep the answer page for yourself, or print it too if you want to check the work later.