Smiling Manatee Colouring Page

This page has one manatee and nothing else, drawn front-on with its big rounded body filling most of the sheet. Its left flipper lifts out to the side as if waving, while the other flipper sits flat and oval against its body. Below, a wide paddle-shaped tail curls out from underneath. Up top is a broad, friendly face: two large round eyes with curved eyebrows, a wide muzzle with two dot nostrils, and a gentle closed-mouth smile. There is no water, no background scenery and no other animals, so the manatee is the only thing to colour in.

What makes this one worth printing is the size of the shapes. The body is one enormous curved space, so a child can colour it with big, loose strokes and it will still look tidy, which is a nice change from sheets that punish a wobbly hand. The flippers and tail are smaller and slightly irregular in outline, so they ask for a bit more care staying inside the line, and the face has enough separate small pieces, the eyes, the eyebrows, the nostrils, to prompt some choices about which colours go where. It is an easy page to talk over while colouring: where the manatee's whiskers might be, why its tail is shaped like a paddle, whether it lives in a river or the sea.

Because the outlines are thick and the main body is so large, this is one of the more forgiving sheets in the ocean set, well suited to a child who is still building control of a crayon or who gets frustrated by fiddly detail. Older preschoolers who like a bit more to do can spend their attention on the eyes and flippers instead. Either way, one sitting is enough to finish it, which makes it a good pick when time or patience is short.