Free Hedgehog Coloring Pages

Hedgehogs are small, round mammals that live in gardens, hedges and woodland across Europe, Asia and Africa. Children usually meet them as the spiky garden visitor that snuffles through the leaves at dusk, or as the rolled-up ball in a picture book, which is why they are such a satisfying animal to sit down and color. The real coat is brown or grey-brown, with a cream face, chest and belly and thousands of spines on the back. That is a perfectly good way to color these sheets. It is also fine to ignore it. A pink hedgehog, a rainbow one, or one whose spines are every color in the crayon box is just as welcome. Point out the soft snout, the round ears and the spines — those three shapes are what make it look like a hedgehog rather than a guinea pig. The face and belly stay pale on a real hedgehog, so those are the parts children often leave cream or light brown. The eight designs get steadily harder. First is a hedgehog sleeping stretched out on its tummy with closed eyes and a smile, thick outlines and a long open belly that suit toddlers still learning to stay inside the lines. Then a cute hedgehog standing on its hind legs with paws raised by its cheeks, one standing and waving, and a chubby baby hoglet sitting front-on, all still bold and friendly. After that the drawings add more to do: a hedgehog sleeping curled on its side with its head on its paws, one walking in profile with a coat of zigzag spines, a hedgehog rolled into a spiky ball with its face and paws peeking out, and a detailed running hedgehog with individual quills for children who like a longer, careful page. The rolled-up ball is the part worth pausing on. When a hedgehog is scared it tucks its head and feet in and becomes a sphere of spines, so foxes and dogs cannot bite it. The curled-ball sheet shows that trick with the face still visible, which is the version children like to color. The sleeping-on-tummy sheet is the natural one for a quiet wind-down, and the running sheet is the one to save for a child who wants to fill every quill. Every sheet prints on landscape US Letter paper at 200 DPI, so the hedgehog 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 color bleeding through — worth doing on the curled-ball and running sheets, where the spine lines sit a little closer together. In the classroom these pages pair well with a lesson on woodland and garden animals, on nocturnal animals, on how animals protect themselves, or on the letter H. Print the sitting hoglet next to the running hedgehog and let children spot the same animal at rest and on the move. The waving sheet is finished in a few minutes; the running hedgehog can fill a quiet stretch of the afternoon. The squirrel coloring pages and raccoon sheets share the same woods, a fox page is the animal a hedgehog rolls up to hide from, the otter coloring pages cover another small woodland mammal, and the other printable animals has the rest.