The unicorn castle
The unicorn castle: a free printable coloring page, from age 6. Two battlemented towers, a smiling cloud and a flower-decked unicorn at the end of the path.
- Recommended age
- Ages 6 and up · an hour, often over two days
- Themes
- Unicorns, Princesses
Two towers, a portcullis, a smiling cloud
The castle takes the whole top half of the page: two battlemented towers, their pointed roofs topped with a star flag, a portcullis of vertical bars under the great gateway, five arched windows and rows of bricks across every wall. A banner carries the name of the place in capital letters — in French, as it was drawn — and just above it a cloud smiles with round cheeks. At the bottom, the unicorn comes up the path, a garland of flowers along its mane, a heart pendant at its neck. Around it: round trees, mushrooms, tulips, a sleeping moon.
The castle out of the books
A castle with battlements, a portcullis and flags is the castle of picture books, of fairy tales, never a real one. Six-year-olds already know what it is for: you stand guard there, you open the great door, you live in it. The banner changes something: the name of the place is written on it, in letters to color. It is often the first place a child puts a pencil, because filling in letters is a way of writing without writing — and it works just as well when the word is in a language they do not read.
The busiest sheet in the theme
This is the busiest of the eight. The bricks of the walls run into dozens, the battlements form two rows, the windows each have their arch, and the ground — mushrooms, bushes, tufts of grass, flowers — fills the whole bottom of the page. No single element is difficult; it is their number that discourages before six. At that age a child picks their own order, holds course over two sessions and goes all the way without being reminded where they had stopped.
Split the page in three
Split the page in three before starting: the sky, the castle, the garden. A child who takes one third per session finishes the sheet; one who jumps from corner to corner abandons it halfway. For the bricks, whatever you do, do not color each brick: one pale flat tone over the whole wall, then a few bricks gone over darker at random, and the wall becomes a wall. The letters of the banner deserve a fineliner. Paper of 120 gsm at least — the page is dense and the layers pile up.
A word for the grown-up: start with the smiling cloud and the moon, right at the top, before anything else. They are two small areas, they finish in three minutes, and a child who has already completed something on a page this busy comes back to it more willingly the next day.
Coloring pages that go with this one
More pages from the same theme, age or season — the ones you print right after.
