Camping Coloring Pages for Preschool
Rain on a tin roof sounds great for about twenty minutes. Then my four-year-old, Wren, is climbing the dinette and asking if we can go home. We were at Lake Wenatchee in May. Soaked. Three days of it.
So I started keeping a folder of camping coloring pages on my phone, the kind I can run off at the library copier before we leave, or print in a panic the night before. Preschool age means big shapes, not tiny mandalas. A tent. A canoe. A bear holding a marshmallow on a stick. Stuff she can finish before she gives up.
Most of these came from an indie design shop online, a couple bucks each. I keep a little stack laminated in the seat pocket. If a link below sends a few cents my way when you grab one, cool, but honestly I print these for my own sanity on the wet days.
Thirty-one pages and a wobbly crayon grip
This was my starter pack. 31 Camping Quotes Coloring Pages. The quotes go a little over Wren’s head, she can’t read yet, but the lettering itself is fat and outline-y, so she colors inside the letters like they’re shapes. Keeps her busy through a whole pot of coffee.
I print these on plain copy paper, not cardstock. Cheaper, and she goes through them fast. One page lasted maybe four minutes the first time before she wanted a fresh one.
Nitpick. A few of the pages are pretty text-heavy, more for a grown-up doing a quiet evening than a toddler. I just skip those and print the ones with a tent or a campfire tucked into the design.
The bulk pack for a long, wet weekend
When I knew we had a five-night trip booked at a spot with zero cell signal, I grabbed 70 Camping Quotes Coloring Pages instead of the smaller set. More is more when you have a kid who treats coloring pages like single-use napkins.
Seventy is genuinely a lot. I printed maybe twenty before we left and left the rest as a file on my laptop for the next trip. They batch print fine, no weird margins cutting off the edges.
One small gripe. There’s overlap with the 31-pack on a handful of designs, so if you already own that one you’ll see a few repeats. Not a dealbreaker at the price, but worth knowing.
When coloring alone runs out of steam
Pure coloring has a shelf life with a preschooler. About fifteen minutes, in my experience. Camping coloring games and activities stretched that because it mixes in little tasks. Connect the dots. Find the hidden thing. Color, then count.
Wren can’t do all of it solo yet, so this one’s more of a together activity. I sit with her, point at the dots, she scribbles. Slower for me but it bought us a whole afternoon during a hailstorm at Deception Pass.
The nitpick. Some of the puzzle pages assume a kid who can already recognize numbers, so a true three-year-old will need you hovering. Five and up could probably run with it alone.
A scribble book that looks like a real journal
These Camping Journal Interior pages aren’t strictly coloring, but hear me out. Wren wants to do what I do, and I keep a beat-up trip notebook. So I print a couple of these journal pages, staple them, and she has her own camp journal to draw in while I write in mine.
There are little prompts and spaces, weather boxes, that sort of thing. She just draws a sun in the weather box and calls it done. Adorable. Keeps her parked at the table.
The catch. These are designed for an actual journal layout, so to use them as scribble pages you’re kind of ignoring the prompts. A planner-minded parent or an older kid would get way more out of the structure than my toddler does.
The pretty pages I sort of stole back for myself
Okay, confession. I bought Vintage Camping Junk Journal Pages for Wren and then mostly kept them for me. The faded retro camper art, the old-map textures. They’re lovely.
For a preschooler, the value is the imagery. I print a page, she colors over the vintage tent in hot pink, zero respect for the aesthetic, and she’s thrilled. I keep a few clean copies in a folder for my own evening unwind after she’s asleep.
The nitpick is real though. The detail level is high, so a kid is coloring big blobs over fine line work. If you want simple toddler-proof outlines, this isn’t that. It’s pretty grown-up stuff that doubles as kid fodder in a pinch.
The shirt design Wren insisted on wearing to color in
This one’s an outlier in a coloring roundup, I know. Weekend Forecast Camping scouting tshirt is a cut file for a shirt, not a page. But it earned its spot for one dumb reason. Wren wanted matching camp shirts with me, and I made us a pair on my little heat press at the kitchen counter.
The design pressed clean on a cheap blank tee from the craft store. Held up through the wash and a full season of campfire smoke and mud.
The honest part. You need a cutting machine and some vinyl to use this, so it’s a different project than printing a page. If you don’t craft, skip it. If you do, it’s a fun afternoon and the kid wears the proof.
The rainy-day rescue file
Camping games and activities for kids became my go-to when straight coloring failed. It’s a grab bag. Mazes, spot the difference, simple drawing prompts. Variety is the whole point with a kid who bores fast.
I printed the maze pages the morning we got rained out near Mount Rainier and Wren actually asked to do another one. That never happens. The mazes are wide and chunky, doable for little hands without a meltdown.
Nitpick. The activity mix skews a touch older, maybe five to eight, so my four-year-old needed help on a couple. The plain coloring and easy mazes she handled fine on her own.
Not a page, but it kept the campsite cute
Drive Slow Camping Wind Spinner is a craft cut file, fully off-script for a coloring post, but Wren and I made one and hung it on the awning so I’m including it. It spins, it’s silly, kids love it.
I cut it from some leftover vinyl and a metal disc blank. Took an evening. Wren picked the colors, which is to say she picked teal and then more teal.
Fair warning. Same deal as the shirt, this needs a cutting machine and a blank spinner to assemble. It’s a parent project the kid helps with, not a print-and-color page. Worth it if you’ve already got the gear sitting around.
Clipart that became a coloring page by accident
Camping Coffee Mug Clipart is meant for making things, stickers, mugs, that kind of project. But I found a use as a parent. I drop the clipart into a blank document, blow it up huge, print it in outline, and boom, instant coloring page of a camp mug for Wren.
Works great because the shapes are simple and bold, exactly what a preschooler wants. She colored a mug bright orange with a face on it. Don’t ask.
The nitpick. You have to do the legwork yourself, resize and print as outline, because it’s not delivered as a ready coloring sheet. Five minutes of fiddling. If you want zero setup, grab one of the actual coloring packs instead.
The flag my sister made and I copied
My sister had this hanging outside her camper at a meetup near Bend and I demanded the file. Camping Lady Garden Flag. It’s a flag design, not a page, but it tied our little campsite together and Wren thought the artwork was the best part.
We printed the design as a coloring sheet first, actually, before sewing the real flag, so Wren could color her own version. Two uses out of one file.
The catch. To make the actual flag you need fabric and some sewing, or a print service. Not a quick thing. But pulling the art out as a print-to-color page for the kid? That part’s easy and free once you own it.
The second spinner, because one is never enough
We made the Drive Slow spinner and then Wren demanded another, so Camping Life Wind Spinner happened. Same craft category, different art. This one has a cleaner, simpler look that I actually liked better for her age.
I cut it the same evening as a batch project and we hung both off the awning at a site outside Leavenworth. They clink a little in the wind. Soothing, mostly.
Nitpick stays the same as the other spinner. Cutting machine required, blank disc required. It’s gear-dependent. If you don’t craft, this isn’t your entry point, but the kid will adore it if you do.
The scene I turned into Wren’s favorite page
Sunset Lake Scene, Camping Camper Svg is technically a cut file, a layered scene of a camper by a lake at sunset. I bought it for a mug and then realized the outline made a beautiful coloring page for a kid who loves drawing our own camper.
I printed it as a plain outline, no fill, and Wren went to town. Purple lake, green sun, the works. It’s become the one she asks for by name, the camper one.
The honest bit. It’s built as an SVG for crafting, so getting a clean outline-only print takes a minute of poking around in the software. Once you’ve got that one print saved, though, you reuse it forever. I’ve run off probably ten copies.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are some camping activities?
For us with a little kid? Coloring when it rains, obviously, that’s why I keep the folder. Beyond that, hunting for pinecones, skipping rocks badly, a flashlight walk to the bathrooms that Wren treats like an expedition.
Roasting marshmallows is the headliner, always. We also do a bug-finding game where she yells the bug name and I pretend to be impressed. It works.
Is camp considered child care?
Depends who’s asking and why. A day camp where you drop your kid for the hours you work? A lot of places and tax rules count that as child care. A weekend you spend tent camping with your own kid is just, you know, parenting in the woods.
I’m not the person to give you the official answer for forms. I learned that the hard way trying to deduct a summer day camp once and getting it wrong. Ask someone who does taxes.
Why is summer camp important to the life of a child?
Honestly? Wren is braver after a few nights out. She’ll try the cold lake. She’ll hold a worm. Stuff she’d never do at home gets normal when she’s away from the couch and the screen.
There’s the unstructured boredom too, which I used to think was bad. Turns out a kid who gets bored at a campsite invents whole games out of three sticks and a rock. That’s the good stuff.
What are summer camp activities for kids?
The ones that actually fill the hours for us: coloring and simple activity pages on the rainy stretches, scavenger hunts, a nature journal she scribbles in to copy me. Campfire songs, even the ones nobody knows the real words to.
A camp mom at our last site swore by a kindness rock painting thing where the kids leave painted rocks around the loop. We tried it. Wren painted one rock, ate a marshmallow, and was done. Mileage varies.
Before You Pack Up
We’re heading back out to the Olympic Peninsula in two weeks and the forecast already looks soggy. The coloring folder’s loaded. Forty-something pages on the laptop, a fresh stack laminated and shoved in the seat pocket.
Don’t overthink which pack to grab first. The 70-page set if you want sheer volume, the games-and-activities file if your kid bores fast like mine. Print a few before you lose signal. Wren’s already asking if she can bring the orange crayon, the stub one, the only one she’ll use.
More Camping Ideas We Love
Heads up: some links in this post are affiliate links. If you grab a file we love, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only feature designs we would happily pack on our own trip.
