Earth Coloring Pages

• Globes: Earth as a ball, turned to show the Americas, Africa and Europe, or Asia and Australia.
• Earth from space: cloud swirls over the oceans, with the moon or the sun in the background.
• Earth's layers: a slice cut out to show the crust, the mantle and the core.
• Earth Day designs: hands holding the planet, recycling arrows and young trees.
• Smiling Earths: a cartoon planet with a face, for the youngest colorers.
• Day and night: half the globe in sunlight and half in the dark, dotted with city lights.
• Classroom globes: a globe on its stand, tilted the way the real planet is.

From space, Earth is mostly blue. Oceans cover about 71 percent of the surface, so blue is the color you'll use most. Here's a realistic palette:

• Deep ocean: dark blue. Switch to a lighter blue near the coasts, where the water is shallow.
• Forests and grassland: green, darkest around the equator in South America and central Africa.
• Deserts: tan and yellow-brown across northern Africa, Arabia and central Australia.
• Ice: white for Antarctica at the bottom, and for Greenland and the Arctic at the top.
• Clouds: leave them white, in curved streaks and swirls.

Earth is the third planet from the sun and the only place we know of with life. It's tilted about 23 degrees. That tilt gives us seasons, and it's why a classroom globe sits at a slant.

If the page shows the layers inside, use colors that get hotter toward the middle: brown for the thin crust, orange for the mantle, yellow for the liquid outer core and pale yellow for the solid inner core.