Sinterklaas coloring at home: ideas for the weeks before 5 December
Written by the Amy Color Club editors with the help of AI and checked by us.
Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) is celebrated in the Netherlands on 5 December. Here is how to use coloring pages during the waiting weeks, by age, with free pages to print.
In the Netherlands, Sinterklaas is a December tradition that many families celebrate with children. The Sinterklaas figure, a bishop with a tall mitre and a staff, arrives by boat in mid-November. The big evening is 5 December, when children get presents, often with a poem. The weeks in between are long for young children, and coloring is a calm way to fill them.
You do not need a project for this. One coloring page at the table after dinner is enough, and it gives the family something to talk about while they wait.
Pick the page for the age
Younger children do best with large, simple shapes and thick crayons or markers. A plain picture of Sinterklaas with his staff is a good start. Try Sinterklaas with his staff for a first page.
Older children enjoy more detail. The horse outside the stable or presents in the toy room have many small areas, so a child can spend longer on one picture.
If there are brothers or sisters of different ages, print the same picture twice. The older child can add a background or a short caption, and the younger one colors the figures. Both are then working on the same story.
It helps to put two or three pages on the table and let the child choose. Keep the rest for another evening.
Five ideas for the evenings
- The shoe. Children leave a shoe by the fireplace or the window, with a carrot for the horse. Print a little shoe with a carrot and color it on the evening the shoe goes out.
- The horse. Color a horse with a present and talk about what the horse does in the story.
- The mitre. Color the big mitre in two colors and let the child invent the pattern. A single color is fine too.
- The arrival. Some families color the boat before the arrival in mid-November. Ask what the people on the quay might be waving at.
- The book. Sinterklaas reading a book is a quiet picture for the time before bed.
For more gift pictures, see the presents collection.
Make it relaxed
Not every child wants to color on the same evening. Put the crayons and paper out and let the child decide. If there is no interest one night, that is fine. The page will still be there later.
If you join in, it becomes a shared activity rather than a task. You do not need to color neatly. Ask the child to tell you about the picture.
Print it well
The pages in this article are free and fit an A4 sheet in portrait orientation. Print at 100 percent, so the lines stay sharp and the edges stay in place. Use ordinary printer paper. Thicker paper helps if you use markers, which can soak through thin sheets.
To finish
Sinterklaas coloring at home does not need to cost anything or take much time. One page in the evening, a bit of conversation and a box for the crayons is enough. The full set of Sinterklaas pages is in the Sinterklaas section of the site.
