Smiling Frog on a Lily Pad Colouring Page

This frog sits facing straight out at the child, legs splayed to each side and both front hands resting on its big round belly. Its head is topped with two bulging eyes, each with a dark pupil and a little white highlight dot, plus two small dot nostrils and a wide curved smile. Underneath, the belly is drawn as one large circle sitting inside the body outline, and the frog perches on a single lily pad with a small notch cut into its front edge.

The whole drawing is built from big, easy shapes: the head, the round belly, the two puffed-out back legs and the lily pad are all large closed spaces a child can fill in with a few strokes each. The front hands and back feet bring in a bit more care, since each one has three or four small toe shapes packed close together, so a child gets to slow down and use a finer grip before going back to sweeping colour across the body. It is a good page for talking about where frogs live, and for naming the eyes, mouth, belly and feet as they go.

There is nothing tricky about the composition and no small background details to fuss over, which makes this one of the calmer sheets in the reptiles and amphibians set. It suits a child who is still working on staying inside the lines on bigger shapes, while the toes and eye details give slightly older preschoolers something to focus on too.