My sister drops the boys off every December 21st so she can have one quiet evening, and somewhere along the way that turned into a tradition. We stay up for the longest night. Seven and ten years old, both convinced the sun is broken. The first year I winged it with construction paper and a flashlight. It went about as well as you’d expect. Glitter in the butter dish for a week.
So now I prep. I keep a folder of solstice things I can send to the cheap copy place on Eldridge the night before, because my home printer chews up anything with heavy dark ink and the boys notice when a moon comes out streaky. They are merciless critics. The ten-year-old once told me a star looked like a starfish that gave up. He was right.
These are the packs that earned a second December. Not the ones that looked sweet in a thumbnail and then printed muddy. Some of the links below are affiliate links, so if you grab one it sends a little something my way. Doesn’t cost you anything extra.
A few links below are affiliate links. If you grab a print through one, it sends a little something my way at no extra cost to you.
The set the ten-year-old didn’t roll his eyes at
I almost skipped this one. The word blessings made me brace for something doily-shaped and precious. It isn’t. The art has weight to it, a real ink-on-paper feel, and when I printed a sheet at 8×10 the boys decided it was a treasure map and spent forty minutes deciding what it unlocked. That counts as art appreciation in my book.
We colored the open areas with the cheap dollar-store markers, the ones that bleed if you breathe near them, and it held up. I taped two finished sheets to the fridge and they stayed there until March, which is the only durability test I trust.
One gripe. A couple of the elements run small, so if your kid presses hard with a crayon they smudge into a blob. We learned to do those bits first while hands were steady. Tea-fueled steadiness lasts about twenty minutes with a seven-year-old, so plan around that.
Round two, and the one I print the most
This is the pack I keep coming back to when I need a quiet hour. The lines are open and forgiving, which matters when the younger one colors like he’s being timed. Nothing here demands precision. He filled a whole sun with three shades of orange and called it lava. Fine by me.
I ran four copies last December so each kid had a spare after the inevitable cocoa spill. At regular printer paper it was already good, but I splurged on 32lb for the ones we actually framed and the difference was real. The black stayed black instead of going that tired gray.
The catch is repetition. A few designs overlap with the first solstice pack, so if you own that one you’re paying a little for things you sort of already have. I’d still grab it for the new pieces alone.
Where I’d start if it’s your first solstice night
If you’re standing in the same spot I was that first chaotic December, holding construction paper and zero plan, start here. It’s the most beginner-friendly of the bunch. Big shapes, clear edges, the kind of thing a seven-year-old can finish before he loses interest and asks about snacks.
We did a simple thing with it. Each kid picked one print, colored it, and we hung them in the hallway with painter’s tape in a row. Instant gallery. The boys made me give a museum tour. I used my serious voice. They were unimpressed but they remembered it the next year, which is the whole point.
My one note is that it leans young. The ten-year-old finished his in ten minutes and wanted something harder, so I had the next pack ready. Have a backup for the older one or you’ll be answering when is it midnight for two straight hours.
The plain one that turned into the favorite
Nothing about this pack screams for attention in the preview. No gold, no flourish, just clean solstice art that prints clean. Which is exactly why it became the workhorse. I’ve sent it to the copy shop more times than anything else in this folder.
We used it for the boring-sounding part of the night that the kids somehow loved most. I taped a blank one to the window after dark, put a lamp behind it, and we traced the glow with pencils. The older one got genuinely into the shadow physics. For once nobody asked for the tablet.
What held me back from full marks is the spacing on one or two of the layouts. A couple sit too close to the page edge, so trimming for a standard frame clips a corner. I print those slightly reduced and it sorts itself out, but it’s a fiddly step on a night when you don’t want fiddly.
The card-and-banner one for the party people
My sister threw a small solstice thing two years ago, six kids and a lot of cocoa, and this is what saved me from buying decorations. I printed the cheerier designs onto cardstock, punched holes, and strung them across the kitchen doorway. Took twenty minutes. Looked like I’d tried.
The happy tone is the point here, so don’t expect anything moody or witchy. It’s bright and a little goofy and the little kids loved that. We also turned a few into folded cards and the boys wrote notes to their mom. The seven-year-old’s said happy longest night I ate three cookies. Framed energy.
Downside, the bright palette eats ink. My poor printer gave up halfway, which is half the reason I keep using the place on Eldridge. If you’re printing a stack of these at home, check your color cartridge first or you’ll get a sad pink solstice.
The one that opened up a whole side conversation
I grabbed this almost by accident and it ended up being the most educational thing of the night. It’s built around Dongzhi, the East Asian winter solstice festival, and the art carries that. We looked up why families eat dumplings and tangyuan on the longest night, then drew our own ridiculous dumplings to match the prints.
The ten-year-old, the same kid who critiques my stars, actually asked questions. Real ones. We ended up watching a short clip about the festival and he reported the whole thing to his mom like a news anchor. The prints themselves are detailed and warm and held their color well at 5×7.
Fair warning, the detail level skews older. The seven-year-old got frustrated with the finer line work and abandoned ship for the simpler packs. So this is a great one to have, just not the one you hand to the youngest at the table.
The Yule cards we mailed to people who’ll never expect them
I ended the night with these every year now. After the coloring chaos winds down and the cocoa’s gone cold, we make cards. This Yule set folds into proper greeting cards and the boys go to town addressing them to grandparents, the neighbor’s cat, a teacher they like.
The art has a folk-craft look that reads grown-up enough that the adults receiving them don’t think a toddler made them, even when a toddler basically did. I print them on the heavier paper so they stand up on a mantel. My mother kept hers two years running, which from her is a standing ovation.
The quibble is the fold lines. There’s no crease guide, so the first few I folded came out crooked and the boys, again, noticed. I started lightly ruling a pencil line with a metal ruler before folding and the cards stopped looking drunk. Small fix, worth doing.
Questions I Get About These
What are good winter solstice art activities for kids?
The ones that worked in my hallway: coloring printable solstice scenes, taping a blank print to a window with a lamp behind it and tracing the glow, stringing the cheerier designs into a doorway banner, and folding Yule cards to mail. Keep the line work simple for younger kids and save the detailed festival prints for the older ones. Have a backup activity ready, because a seven-year-old finishes faster than you think and goes straight for the snacks.
How do you explain the winter solstice to children?
I told my nephews the sun isn’t broken, it’s just the night that gets the longest turn this once, and after it the days slowly grow back. The window-tracing trick helped more than words. We talked about light coming back while the lamp glowed through the paper. The Dongzhi pack opened a real conversation too, dumplings and all. Kids latch onto the longest night and the light returning far better than they latch onto axial tilt, so lead with the story and let the science sneak in.
Are printable solstice activities reusable for a classroom?
Yes, that’s their whole advantage. You buy the files once and print as many copies as you have kids, this year and next. I run mine at the copy place on Eldridge so a class set costs pennies a sheet. A teacher friend laminates a master copy of the simpler line-art sheets for dry-erase practice and keeps the rest as one-time coloring pages. Check the license on each pack for classroom use, but the printing math is what makes them worth it over store-bought booklets.
Before You Tape Anything Up
Here’s what I figured out after a few of these nights. The kids don’t remember the fanciest print. They remember the window-tracing, the crooked cards, the dumpling tangent that ran an hour long. The art is just the excuse to sit at a table together on the darkest night of the year and not look at a screen.
So grab one or two of these, not all seven. Print them flat, color them badly, hang the results somewhere you’ll see them in February when winter feels endless. That’s the part that lasts. The glitter, regrettably, also lasts. You’ve been warned about the butter dish.