Homeschool Using Free Printable Coloring Books

There are a plethora of educational resources available on the internet that make it easy to homeschool economically. One such resource is printable coloring books. Coloring books may not be thought of as educational; so much as they are a means to keep children occupied. However, many of the coloring books available on the web were written by government agencies or various organizations in order to provide information in a format that is easy for children to understand. Therefore, there are many coloring books available online that you can use to teach or supplement the subjects in your homeschool.

Where to find free printable coloring books
First, decide what topic you want your children to study. Let's use water safety as an example. Go to your favorite search engine and type "water safety coloring book". You will probably find a couple of coloring books that way. But do not stop with a general search. Click on the search engine's "advanced search" link. Change the "results per page" field to 100 and change the "file type" to Adobe Acrobat PDF. Then search again. How many results come up depends on your topic. Look through the results. You can then click a few links until you find the coloring book that will be the most beneficial to for your homeschool.

Printing and Binding Your Books
Print out one book per child. If possible, print your coloring book on both sides of the paper or use the booklet printing option on your printer. That way the children will feel that it is a "real book". You may also want to use the draft or quick print setting on your printer to cut down on the amount of ink you use. If your books aren't too thick, bind them by placing three or four staples down the side of the pages. Otherwise, you can hole punch the book and secure it in a pronged folder.

How to use the coloring books as teaching texts
Have the children sit with you and look at the coloring book while you read it to them. You can discuss the contents of the book or answer questions along the way. Or, you can pick a child to read the book aloud if you have one who is able. Once the book is finished, each child can color the pages in his book. To add to the learning, you can also read a book from the library covering that same subject while your children color.

Using printable books for older children
You may have a child who is not interested in coloring or who has passed the age of using coloring books. However, you can still find free books online. Some of the coloring books have activities in them as well, such as mazes, word finds, or fill in the blanks. So look through the books that you find in your search to see if some of them may interest your older children. Also you could exchange the word "activity" for "coloring" in the search engine. That way you will find activity books instead of primarily coloring ones.

It may take some time to find coloring books on the topic you want to cover. But the effort is well worth it to get free educational material that you can print out and use for each child in your family.