What is on this coloring sheet
A cat face fills most of this sheet, with pointed ears at the top, two brown eyes, a pink nose and a small pink tongue below the mouth. It is the easiest of the eight to finish because the orange face is one large connected block, and the details that make it a cat rather than a circle take only a few squares each. The background is green, which reads as grass and keeps the face bright against it.
How to use it
Print the sheet and color the orange face first, since it is much the largest area. The pink ears, nose and tongue and the brown eyes and mouth are small and go in afterwards.
Three ways to practice
Find the face first
Ask your child to color only the brown and pink squares to begin with. The eyes, nose and mouth appear on a blank grid, and the cat is recognizable before a single orange square is filled.
Name the small parts
There are four things on this sheet that are not the face: ears, eyes, nose and tongue. Naming each one as it is colored gives a preschooler four new words attached to something they can point at.
Give the cat a name
Have your child write a name under the finished sheet. Writing one word they chose themselves is far less daunting than a handwriting exercise and gets the same pencil onto the same paper.
A tip worth knowing
Do the eyes and mouth before the face. A young child who sees a face looking back at them halfway through will happily finish the rest.
Printing this sheet
Frequently asked questions
Is this the easiest coloring sheet you have?
It is among the easiest, along with the flower. The face is one large block of a single number, so there is less hunting around the grid than on the star or the butterfly.
Why is the background green?
Green sits well against orange and reads as grass, so the cat looks like it is outside rather than floating. It also keeps the sheet from being two shades of the same thing.
My child colored the ears the wrong shade of pink. Does it matter?
Not at all. The key names colors that make a convincing cat, but the picture comes from which squares go together, not from exact shades. Two pinks in the same picture still look fine.