Maple tree coloring page with falling leaves, winding park path, bench, lamp post, and distant trees

Maple Leaves Falling Over a Park Path

A tall maple spreads jagged leaves above a curving park path, with loose leaves drifting past a bench and lamp post.

🎨 How to color it

Color the maple leaves in pumpkin orange, golden yellow, and cranberry red, with a warm brown trunk, sage grass, and a deep green row of smaller park trees. Use sharp colored pencils for the many pointed leaf edges and veins, then switch to broad side-strokes for the winding path and open sky. Try making the leaves closest to the bench extra bright, as if the tree is sending its best colors down that curve.

The story behind this coloring page

Merrit Shares the First Blaze — If you ever hear a dry leaf skitter like a whispered secret, it may be telling Merrit’s old rule. Read the full story →

If you ever hear a dry leaf skitter like a whispered secret, it may be telling Merrit’s old rule. Merrit stood beside the curving park path and dared himself to make one color for every bend before the lamplighter clicked the evening lamp awake. He squeezed sunlight through his branches: gold for the first turn, orange for the bench, red for the far little hill. The colors felt warm and fizzy, like cider bubbles under his bark.

But the park stayed too quiet. A beetle below could not see the gold. The bench sparrow only caught a flash of orange when the wind tipped a leaf. Merrit’s joy grew so big it crowded his twigs. “I can’t keep this,” he rustled, and shook once—not hard, just enough. Down sailed one red leaf, then five gold ones, then a whole bright hush of them, pat-pat-patting on the path.

The lamplighter stopped. Two children filled their pockets. Even the beetle marched under a yellow roof. Ever since that evening, maples let their finest colors fall, because a joy that big needs feet to carry it. Next time a leaf skitters by, dare it to tell you Merrit’s old rule.