Ankylosaurus Colouring Page

This sheet shows a friendly ankylosaurus from the side, standing still on four short, sturdy legs. Its back is covered in rows of rounded armour plates, about a dozen in all, running from the neck down to the base of the tail. The tail itself sweeps up and winds into a tight spiral at the tip, like a curled snail shell, standing in for the bony club real ankylosaurs carried. The face is simple and cheerful: one large round eye, a small nostril, and a curved smiling mouth. Each of the four feet has three rounded claws poking out at the bottom.

What makes this one worth printing is the mix of shapes on offer. The body, head and legs are big, open spaces that a small hand can fill quickly with one confident colour, which is satisfying on its own. The armour plates are a different kind of challenge: each one is a separate closed oval sitting right next to its neighbour, so a child has to stop at the line rather than run one plate into the next. Plenty of children enjoy giving each plate its own colour, turning the back into a patchwork, while others will happily colour the whole dinosaur in green and call it done. Either way there is a natural conversation starter in that curled tail tip, which does not look like anything else on the page.

Because the outlines are thick and the plates are a reasonable size rather than tiny scales, this sits on the easier end of dinosaur colouring pages. It suits toddlers just getting comfortable holding a crayon inside a line, and it gives four and five year olds enough separate plates to slow down and make deliberate colour choices if they want to. There is no background or ground line to fill in, so the whole page is finished once the dinosaur itself is done.