Free Rhino Coloring Pages

Rhinos are huge, thick-skinned mammals that live on the grasslands and open woodlands of Africa and in the forests and floodplains of Asia. There are five kinds: white and black rhinos in Africa, and Indian, Javan and Sumatran rhinos in Asia. Children usually meet them as the two-horned shape in a picture book or at the zoo, which is why they are such a popular animal to colour. The real colour is grey or grey-brown, often with a coating of dried mud that can look reddish, yellow or almost black. That is a perfectly good way to colour these sheets. It is also fine to ignore it. A green rhino, a pink one, or a rainbow one is just as welcome. The horns are the part most children want to fill first. They are made of keratin, the same stuff as hair and fingernails, not bone, and they can be sandy, dark brown or almost black. Point out that African rhinos have two horns and Indian rhinos have one — the armour-plated sheet on this page is the one-horn kind. The eight designs get steadily harder. First is a rhino sleeping on its belly with its eyes closed — thick outlines and a huge empty body, right for toddlers still learning to stay inside the lines. Then a chubby baby calf sitting up with tiny nubby horns, a cartoon rhino running, and a smiling one standing in side view, all still bold and friendly. After that the detail climbs: a rhino standing upright and waving, a close-up smiling face with folds of skin, an Indian rhino whose body is covered in armour-like plates, and a detailed grazing rhino with grass, a plant and wrinkled hide for children who like a longer, careful page. Every sheet prints on landscape US Letter paper at 200 DPI, so the rhino 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 armour-plated and grazing sheets, where the fold lines sit close together. In the classroom these pages pair well with a lesson on African and Asian wildlife, on grasslands, on the letter R, or on how a horn is not a bone. Print the standing cartoon rhino next to the armour-plated Indian rhino and let children spot the difference in the number of horns and the skin folds — it turns colouring into a short observation exercise. The sleeping rhino is finished in a few minutes; the grazing sheet can fill a quiet stretch of the afternoon. Print a few different designs and let each child pick the one that matches their patience that day. The elephant, giraffe, zebra pages and hippo coloring pages complete a savanna set, and the other animal coloring sheets has the rest. Rhinos are also a gentle way into talking about protecting animals. All five kinds are under pressure in the wild, and children who have just spent twenty minutes colouring one tend to want to know why — a small, natural opening for talking about habitats and looking after them.