Simple House With A Sun Coloring Page

Hand a toddler this one before any of the others. The whole drawing is a square with a thick triangle roof dropped on top, and the outline is heavy enough that a fat crayon cannot hide it. A door with a round knob sits in the middle of the wall, with one small paned window to its left and a slightly larger one to its right. Up in the top right corner a round sun throws out eight straight rays, spaced far enough apart that a two year old can fill the gaps between them. Four little tufts of grass poke up along a single curved line under the house, and that is the entire page. What makes it work for very young children is the amount of untouched paper. Every shape is big, every shape is closed, and nothing sits close enough to anything else to get scribbled over by accident. Older children use the same sheet as a starting grid instead. The blank wall takes stripes, bricks, spots or a pattern of their own invention, and the sun is the obvious place to try out three shades side by side. Print it twice and the two ages can work on it at the same table without either of them being bored.