Scarecrow Coloring Page

About this coloring page

A scarecrow on a plain pole with a round head, a wide hat and a shirt with two large patches, with one small bird sitting on the hat. The patches are the interesting part: they are separate shapes on top of the shirt, so a child can make them clash deliberately, which is what real scarecrows look like and what makes the drawing read as one. Encouraging a child to pick the wrong colors on purpose here is worth doing, because it is one of the few subjects where mismatched is more correct than matched. The hat is a single large shape and the head is another, so the picture looks finished quickly even if the patches never get done. The bird on the hat is the smallest element and the joke of the drawing, since it is sitting on the thing meant to frighten it. Printed at A4 there is room below to write a name. On ordinary paper crayon and pencil both work; the patches are small enough that a thick marker will overrun them.

Color suggestions

• Clashing patches on purpose
• Straw yellow hat
• Blue or checked shirt
• Black bird, red neckerchief

Did you know?

• Scarecrows are at least three thousand years old. Egyptian farmers along the Nile put wooden frames in wheat fields to keep quail off, and Greek farmers carved wooden figures of Priapus for the same job.
• Birds work out very quickly that a scarecrow is harmless. Modern farms move them every few days precisely because a stationary figure stops working within about a week.