Children learn about shapes and basic sorting activities through coloring. Give children a worksheet with multiple outlines of common shapes--triangles, squares and circles. Instruct children to color the triangles red, the squares yellow and the circles green. To increase the difficulty of this task, add rectangles and diamonds to the worksheet.
Provide worksheets for coloring capital and lowercase letters. If the children are learning about a particular letter--B, for example--they could be given coloring pages with words containing the letter B (ball, bag, bubbles) and be instructed to only color the B letters in the word. You can also provide pictures of objects all starting with the letter B (bat, bike, boy) for the children to color.
Mazes are a fun coloring activity that helps young children develop logic and pre-math skills. Children color the correct path to get from the start of the maze to the end. For added learning, challenge the children to color a path in particular shape, symbol or basic pattern (circle, square, circle, square) to guide them through the maze.
A classic coloring activity, connect the dots teaches basic drawing fundamentals. Children enjoy this activity because of the element of surprise when they realize what picture the dots represent. This activity is customizable to any theme, season or holiday. You can make your own connect-the-dots pictures or select from ready-made printable worksheets found on the Internet.
Get a roll of easel paper and ask the children to lay on it. Have an adult draw an outline of the child's body. The children can then color a life-size version of their own body, filling in the outline with eyes, mouth, nose, hair, clothes and shoes.