Octopus
Preschool · 3–5A smiling octopus with a big domed head and six wavy legs curling underneath. The legs are separate shapes, so this page works beautifully as a rainbow octopus — one color per arm — or as one bold color all the way through. Each leg is wide at the top and rounded at the tip, which keeps the outlines easy to stay inside. Coloring an octopus is a natural way into talking about the deep sea, about how many arms an octopus really has, and about counting to eight. Print it on A4 or US Letter for a sea-life theme, or color it online with tap-to-fill.
Eight arms to fill
The arms are the page. Eight of them, curling in different directions, each its own long region — which makes this one of the best counting subjects here and one of the longer pages to finish. Count them before starting and again at the end.
Because the arms curl, following each one to its tip is real tracking practice — the same skill as following a line of text with a finger.
Colour-changing skin
An octopus can change the colour and even the texture of its skin in about a second, to hide or to signal. It has three hearts and blue blood as well. It is comfortably the strangest animal on this site and children of six upwards find it fascinating.
Frequently asked questions
- How many arms does an octopus have?
- Eight. Counting them on the page before and after colouring is a good check, and the curling arms make it harder than counting a row.
- Can an octopus really change colour?
- Yes, in about a second, using special cells in the skin. It can change texture too, to match rock or seaweed.
