Free Printable Person Outline Templates (PDF)

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These free printable person outline templates give children a simple starting point for crafts, self-portraits and classroom activities. The black-and-white people can be colored, decorated, labeled and cut out, making them useful for everything from paper dolls to human-body lessons.

If you’d like a character with questions already included, our printable All About Me student craft has spaces for favorite foods, hobbies, and more.

The PDF collection includes large and small person templates, with both blank faces and friendly smiling faces. Choose the design that fits your project, then add clothing, hair, facial features or other details to make each person unique. For ready-made seasonal outfits, try our Halloween paper dolls with costumes to color, cut out, and fold around the dolls.

What’s Included in the Person Template PDF

The printable set gives you several simple people shapes in different arrangements:

• A large, full-page blank person outline
• A large person template with a smiling face
• Smaller blank people outlines for group projects and game pieces
• Smaller smiling people templates for puppets, characters and classroom displays

Because the designs are simple and unfilled, children can turn them into almost any character or person they imagine. The templates work for preschool and elementary activities, but older children can also use them for more detailed art, fashion or storytelling projects.

Materials

• The printable person outline PDF, available near the bottom of this post
• Regular printer paper or cardstock
• Crayons, markers or colored pencils
• Child-safe scissors
• Glue, tape, craft sticks, yarn, fabric scraps or construction paper (optional)

Ways to Use the Person Outline Templates

• Create self-portraits: Children can add their hair, clothing, favorite colors and other details that represent them.
• Make paper dolls: Decorate the people and design removable paper outfits for different seasons, jobs or stories.
• Build puppets: Glue a finished person cutout to a craft stick and use it in a puppet show.
• Explore careers: Turn the blank people into teachers, firefighters, doctors, artists or other community helpers.
• Retell stories: Create characters from a favorite book and use them to act out important scenes.
• Talk about emotions: Draw different facial expressions and discuss what each person might be feeling.
• Learn body parts: Label major body parts or use the outline as a starting point for a simple anatomy lesson.
• Celebrate families and communities: Make a person for each family or class member and combine them in a display.
• Design clothing: Add everyday outfits, costumes or clothing inspired by a thoughtfully researched place and time.
• Create game pieces or ornaments: Print smaller figures, decorate them and mount them on cardstock for extra strength.

Children can draw features themselves or add our printable eye outlines for a silly mixed-media person craft.

The Printable Person Outlines

Full-Page Blank Person Outline

This large blank person template leaves the face and body completely open for children to customize. It works especially well for self-portraits, body-part labeling, clothing design and coloring activities.

Smiling Person Template

This version has the same large people shape with a simple smiling face already added. Children can draw hair and clothing, or cut it out to make a friendly paper doll or puppet.

Small Blank People Templates

The smaller blank person cutouts are useful when you need several figures on one page. Try them for family groups, classroom displays, story characters, sorting activities or homemade board-game pieces.

Small Smiling People Templates

These smaller people include happy faces while leaving plenty of room for hair, clothes and other details. They are a quick choice for group crafts when children don’t need to draw every facial feature from scratch.

How to Print and Cut Out the Templates

1. Choose the person outline pages you want and print only those pages from the PDF.
2. Use regular paper for drawing and coloring, or cardstock when the finished people need to be sturdier.
3. Color and decorate the person before cutting so small details are easier to add.
4. Cut carefully around the outside line. Younger children may need adult help around the arms and legs.
5. Glue the finished cutout to construction paper, cardboard or a craft stick if the project needs extra support.

To resize a template, adjust the scale or pages-per-sheet option in your printer settings. Choose 100% or Actual Size for the original layout, or select a smaller percentage when you need little people for a group scene or game.

Preschool and Classroom Activity Ideas

For a beginning-of-the-year activity, have each child decorate a person to look like themselves and share one detail with the class. Pair the craft with our All About Me worksheets to create a personal classroom display or keepsake.

The outlines can also support lessons about body parts, emotions, families, careers and storytelling. When children create people from different cultures or historical periods, look at reliable pictures together and discuss the clothing and traditions instead of treating them like costumes.

Grab the Free Person Outline Templates

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These printables are for personal or classroom use only. Please do not sell, alter for resale or redistribute the digital files. Thank you!

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These simple person templates can become something completely different every time a child uses them. Add our printable hand outlines for a body-parts activity or use the lip templates to create funny mixed-media faces. However you use them, the blank designs leave plenty of room for children’s own ideas.

Person Outline Template FAQ