Free Fox Coloring Pages

Foxes are small wild members of the dog family. The red fox lives in woods, fields and even the edges of towns on every continent except Antarctica, and its cousins include the huge-eared fennec of the Sahara and the arctic fox of the far north. Children usually meet them as the clever character in a story, which is why a fox page is such an easy one to sit down with. The coat is the fun part, and there is no single "right" fox. Red foxes are rusty orange with a white chest, black legs and a white tip on the tail. Arctic foxes turn white in winter and brown in summer. Fennec foxes are creamy sand-coloured, which helps them disappear in the desert. Children can copy a real coat or invent a purple one. Point out the pale chest and the white tail tip, which stay light on almost every red fox. The eight designs get steadily harder. The first two are the easy ones — a chubby sitting fox with a round face, and a sitting fox with enormous ears — thick outlines and big open shapes for toddlers still learning to stay inside the lines. Next come a simple leaping fox with a large empty body, a playful pouncing fox in a play-bow, and a stretching, yawning fox. Then a fox sitting up with its head tilted. The last two are the longer projects: a fox curled up asleep with fur around its face, and a walking fox glancing back over its shoulder for children who like a careful, sit-down page. The pounce is the part worth pausing on. Foxes hunt a bit like cats: they listen for a mouse under the grass or snow, then leap high and drop straight down on it. The leaping sheet and the pouncing sheet are good ones to talk about while colouring — ask what the fox might have heard. Every sheet prints on landscape US Letter paper at 200 DPI, so the fox fills the page without being cut off. Plain copier paper is fine for crayons and colored pencils. If you are using markers or paint, slightly thicker card stock stops the colour bleeding through — worth doing on the sleeping and walking sheets, where the fur lines sit closer together. In the classroom these pages pair well with a lesson on woodland habitats, on how animals stay warm (the sleeping fox wrapping its tail around itself like a blanket), on desert and arctic cousins of the same animal, or on the letter F. Print a few different designs and let each child pick: the chubby sitting fox is finished in a few minutes, while the walking fox can fill a whole quiet afternoon, which keeps a mixed-age table busy at the same time. The raccoon and squirrel pages come from the same woods, the hedgehog coloring pages add another small forest neighbour, and the other woodland and jungle animals are one click away.