Family History Coloring Pages

Break out the crayons – it’s time to make colorful family history together!

The idea of producing coloring pages based on family photographs is not original to me. But it is such a simple and relatively easy way to draw children into learning a family story that I feel it bears repeating.

Here’s my method:

1. Select a photo with elements that will appeal to your colorists!

You may get away with a handful of portraits, but I don’t know a child whose interest can be held for too long by static, somber faces. Some of the favorite coloring pages I have created also include an animal in the image. Maybe you have photos that are not of people at all but of steamboats, old houses or cars, etc. And remember, it didn’t have to occur 100+ years ago to qualify as family history! What about a snapshot of YOU up to bat or building a go-kart with your brother or dressed up for prom?

2. Create a digital copy of this photo at 300 dpi or higher.

One of my favorite apps is Google’s PhotoScan which allows me to effectively scan a hard-copy image with a few clicks from my phone. The result is miraculously glare-free!

3. Save a copy of your photo and convert this copy into a black-and-white image with moderately high levels of contrast.

Again, I know that many others have more sophisticated methods for using photo editing software to convert photos into coloring pages. I gave a couple of those a try and they were beyond my skill level. So I open a new Word doc and insert my photo, then navigate to the Picture Format tab. I either go to Adjust>Color>Recolor Black & White 50 or 75% OR Adjust>Artistic Effects>Photocopy. What I am after is darkening the darks and lightening the lights and distracting myself less with details in the original image.

4. Print the black & white image at full-page size.

5. “Lightbox” setup

Grab a pencil with an eraser, a small piece of tape or three and a blank sheet of paper. Take the printed image over to a sunny window and tape it temporarily at about your eye level. Tape the clean sheet of paper on top of that and voila! You’ve got a free lightbox for tracing!

6. Trace the image!

Use light pressure if you’re not super confident. Keep the original (or digital copy of the original) handy so you can refer to it occasionally and see if your coloring page is coming close enough to satisfy your desired level of resemblance. Try to have fun with this 😀 It’s not just the kiddies who are allowed to have fun with family history, after all!

7. Final Scan

Either go over your penciled lines with a felt-tip pen or thin marker, then scan and use as desired. OR scan the penciled image as-is and use a computer program to adjust the brightness and contrast so your lines are sufficiently dark and thick, as coloring lines should be.

8. Get copies into the hands of family members – kids of all ages!

I have not created a coloring book to compare with those found at the supermarket. This may be your goal, and if you really enjoy the process, then go for it!

In my experience it’s been less burdensome and more fun to crank out one or two of these for a specific occasion. This has meant I as the creator haven’t burned out and sworn off the practice entirely. I think it’s also been appreciated on the receivers’ end. I.E. my children and their cousins have not (yet) told me they are fed up with or bored of family coloring pages.

Some ideas for distribution:

• Offer an incentive for completion. Yes, I suppose I am “one of those aunts/moms.” I say there’s no harm in sweetening the deal from time to time by offering a small treat to those who show off their masterpieces.
• Write on your coloring page a directive to get the story behind the photo from a living family member who is familiar with it. For example, on my coloring page of my deceased grandpa as a 3-year-old on a horse, I wrote, “Bonus: Ask [Grandpa’s daughter, my mother] to tell you the story behind this picture!” I could have opted just to write the photo’s story on the coloring page. But this way, the kids had a moment of connection with a living relative as well as a deceased ancestor. And we of course combined this idea with the sweet incentive so each colorist got a hug, a story, AND a candy reward from their loving Grandma for their artistic efforts😊
• Make a contest out of it! Involve adults too! Maybe you can see who got the colors on Grandaddy’s football uniform correct! Or you could intentionally leave some parts of your coloring page blanked and see whose attempts at filling in the blanks came closest to the original. For example, don’t fret over the facial features of that newly-wed couple. Just tell your colorists to give them faces and see if they can produce recognizable likenesses – and laugh at the variety of expressions they put on bride and groom! Or don’t draw any hair on a person and tell your colorists to guess at what hairstyle they were sporting in that era.
• Time the send-out of a coloring page to coincide with an ancestor’s birthday, wedding anniversary, or other meaningful time of remembrance for your family.
• Encourage colorists to share their finished pages on social media (a family Facebook group or the like) or in a group text string so cousins can see what their cousins produced. Again, foster connections with past AND present family, right?!
• Create a small series of these coloring pages and use family members’ help to transform them into a picture-book story about a particular ancestor. (You may be the one who writes the accompanying text, or you might ask for help there too). Assign a specific coloring page to a specific child and tell them this is their chance to contribute to a special storybook! When the finished pages are returned to you, combine pictures with text and print this collaborative, colorful booklet as a pdf to be read from a tablet or a fancy book printed on actual paper, whatever fits your budget. Hopefully the kids will get such a kick out of seeing their artwork, they’ll ask for this one at bedtime frequently, eh?

Please comment down below to share YOUR successes with family history coloring pages!