Gail On Tech

Free colouring-in pages

The school holidays can be a pretty expensive time for families and in the current economic climate, everyone is looking to cut costs.

So, if you’re looking for something to keep young kids or grandkids occupied during the school holidays without breaking the bank, online coluring-in site The Color (I wish those Americans would learn to spell!) should help them while away some time, and it won’t cost you a cent.

Also, because all the colouring in is done online, you won’t have to clean up any mess afterwards, nor use unnecessary paper and printing ink, unless the picture is printed out. However, if you prefer to print out the pictures to be coloured in away from the computer — say, to take away to do on holidays or in the car on a long trip — they can be printed out as line drawings.

The Color Web site

Kids can choose pictures to colour in from 100 categories — some are very US-centric, but most cover general subjects such as dogs, dinosaurs, superheroes and circuses.

Pictures are also grouped by Most Popular, Most Recent and Top Rated; these selections can be viewed using the tabs at the top of the page.

To get started, kids need to click on a category, then click on a drawing they’d like to colour. It’s then just a simoke matter of clicking on a colour from the paint palette, then clicking on the area of the picture they want to be that colour.

Choose swatches from the paint palette to colour the picture.

When the picture is finished being coloured, it can be saved, printed or emailed, or you can click on the Start Over button to begin colouring it again.

To save a picture, it’s necessary to sign up to the site — it’s free — and the saved pictures will be stored in the My Galleries area, where they can be viewed at any time.