Fish Among the Weeds Coloring Page

About this coloring page

A smiling fish with wide fins, swimming among three water plants with bubbles rising. The scales are drawn as rows of separate shapes, which is the whole reason to choose this page: a child can alternate two colors down the rows and produce something that looks patterned without planning anything, and that alternation is real practice at holding a rule in mind while the hand is busy. The fins are wide and few, so they take a color quickly. The bubbles are small circles that most children leave white, which is the right answer. Fish are one of the few subjects where the most unrealistic colors are also the most accurate, since tropical species genuinely are that bright, and a child cannot really overdo it here. Printed at A4 the fish fills the width of the sheet. On ordinary paper crayon and pencil both work well across the scale rows; a thick marker will merge them. Several fish coloring sheets colored differently and cut out make a shoal for a wall, which one picture on its own does not.

Color suggestions

• Two colors alternating down the scale rows
• Orange with white stripes
• Blue and yellow tropical
• Leave the bubbles white

Did you know?

• Fish sense movement in the water with a line of pressure detectors running along each flank called the lateral line, which is how a shoal turns together in the dark without collisions.
• Goldfish do not have three-second memories. They have been trained in laboratory conditions to push levers at particular times of day and to navigate mazes, remembering the task for months.