Smiling boy catches a football from an older player in a backyard with tree, fence, flowers, and clouds

Backyard Football Arc Catch

A laughing child reaches for a spiraling football while an older player tosses it beneath a leafy backyard tree.

Ages 5-7
Standard style
Cute
Fathers Day
Summer

🎨 How to color it

Color the football warm brown with white laces, the big tree leafy green with a tan trunk, and the picket fence soft sky blue. Use chunky crayons for the open shirts, shorts, and grass patches, and don’t worry if little hands color over the lines. Try making the dotted “arc” path a rainbow trail so the pass looks like it carried a secret through the yard.

The story behind this coloring page

The Pass With a Pocket — Under the tall maple, Finn kept patting the folded paper pocket taped inside his shorts. It crinkled like a dry leaf. Read the full story →

Under the tall maple, Finn kept patting the folded paper pocket taped inside his shorts. It crinkled like a dry leaf. He had drawn a tiny map on it: tree, fence, flower, cloud. “Throw it high,” he called, and his cousin Jace sent the football humming through the warm air.

The ball rose over the daisies, dipped by the white fence, and seemed to follow Finn’s map exactly. Then a small gray feather slid from the spinning laces and floated down, soft as a whisper. Finn held it beside his paper pocket. The cloud on his map was not a cloud at all—it was a bird shape.

Jace laughed quietly. “So that’s where the swallows turn.” Finn tucked the feather into the pocket and waited for the next pass, wondering where the sky would point. Next time you see the ball’s little arc, can you trace the secret bird road from the tall maple?