Free Kangaroo Coloring Pages

Kangaroos are marsupials that live on the grasslands, open woodlands and dry plains of Australia. They hop on two huge back legs, balance with a long thick tail, and carry their babies in a pouch — which is usually the first thing children want to talk about. A grown red kangaroo can stand as tall as an adult person, which makes them one of the animals kids ask to colour as soon as they meet Australia in a book or a lesson. The real coat is reddish-brown, grey-brown or sandy tan, with a paler cream chest and belly and slightly darker paws, ears and tail. That is a perfectly good way to colour these sheets. It is also fine to ignore it. A pink kangaroo, a rainbow one, or one whose pouch is a bright surprise colour is just as welcome. The long tail, the big back feet and the small front paws are the three shapes that make it look like a kangaroo rather than a giant rabbit, so those are worth pointing out. The eight designs get steadily harder. First is a chubby cartoon kangaroo sitting and scratching its ear with a hind foot, eyes squeezed shut and a huge smile — thick outlines and wide open shapes, right for toddlers still learning to stay inside the lines. Then a kangaroo sitting on its haunches with its paws together, one in a playful boxing stance with both fists up, and one hopping mid-air, all still bold and friendly. After that the drawings become more realistic: a kangaroo standing in side profile, one glancing back over its shoulder, one bending down to graze, and a mother with a joey peeking out of her pouch for children who like a longer, careful page. The pouch is the part worth pausing on. A newborn joey is about the size of a grape. It crawls into the pouch on its own and stays there for months, drinking milk and growing until it is ready to hop out. The mother-and-joey sheet is the natural one to talk about while colouring — two animals on one page, and a chance to colour the baby a slightly paler shade than mum. Every sheet prints on landscape US Letter paper at 200 DPI, so the kangaroo 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 mother-and-joey sheet, where the two faces sit close together. In the classroom these pages pair well with a lesson on Australian wildlife, on marsupials (a kangaroo next to a koala is a memorable pair), on how animals move, or on the letter K. The boxing kangaroo is a fun one to act out before colouring; the hopping sheet fits a short talk about why a kangaroo's back legs are so much bigger than its front ones. Print a few different designs and let each child pick: the scratching-ear kangaroo is finished in a few minutes, while the mother and joey can fill a quiet stretch of the afternoon, which keeps a mixed-age table busy at the same time. The rabbit pages show a very different way of hopping, and the complete animal collection has the rest.