The mouse
The mouse: a free printable coloring page, from age 2. Big round ears, six whiskers, an S-shaped tail and a spiral horn on the forehead.
- Recommended age
- Ages 2 and up · 10 to 15 minutes
- Theme
- Animals
Two ears bigger than the head
The mouse sits face on, paws tucked under it. Its ears are two large discs, almost as wide as its head, and each contains a second circle to color separately — four areas for the ears alone. The muzzle carries a black teardrop nose, a double-curved mouth, and three long whiskers on each side that stick out beyond the face. The belly is a solid oval, underlined by two small curves standing in for arms. Two round feet stick out at the bottom. The tail goes off to the right and curls into an S.
Small, quick, and everywhere
The mouse is the animal children find tiny and slightly alarming at the same time. They see them in books, sometimes a real one crossing a cellar or a garage, and always very fast. It slips through holes barely wider than a pencil, because its skull is the only part that does not compress. Its whiskers measure the gaps for it in the dark. It nibbles all day, sleeps by day, comes out at night, and uses its tail to keep its balance when climbing.
Large shapes, and nothing lost
The largest shapes really are large: the belly, the head, the two ears. A very young child does the whole mouse in a few passes of a fat marker. What comes after is a bonus: the inside of the ears is a circle within a circle, which only shows with two different shades; the tail, long and narrow, colors without straying at about 4, not before. None of that is compulsory — the sheet is complete without it, and that is why it starts at 2.
Two pinks, not one
The ears are the place that decides the sheet. Take two different pinks: the lighter for the inner disc, the darker for the outline. The same principle works with two grays, or a gray and a beige. That simple gap gives volume to a shape which, colored in a single shade, would become a blot. For the tail, a well-sharpened pencil goes better than a marker: it is narrow, and marker ink spills over both sides at once. The rest of the body takes anything.
A word for the grown-up: suggest counting the whiskers before starting, three on one side, three on the other. That little count forces a close look at the drawing, and the child then notices lines they would have colored without seeing.
Coloring pages that go with this one
More pages from the same theme, age or season — the ones you print right after.
