Nutcracker Coloring Page
About This Coloring Page
The nutcracker is the Christmas character that is also a person, which makes this page useful in a way the tree and the wreath are not. Hat, beard, arms, jacket, boots: a child can point to each part on the page and find it on themselves, and the stiff soldier pose makes the game funnier because the nutcracker cannot bend at all.
The uniform is built from bands and buttons. A row of buttons down the jacket, a band across the hat, cuffs at the wrists, a stripe down each trouser leg. Each one is a narrow bounded shape in a row, and working down them in order, alternating two colours, is the first pattern most children make on purpose.
Most children meet a nutcracker on a shelf before they meet one in a story, so the page is also a chance to say what it is for. A soldier that opens its mouth to crack a nut is a strange enough idea to keep a four-year-old talking for the rest of the page, and the present at his boots gives them something to guard.
Skills Practiced
How to Use This Coloring Page
- Point to the beard, then yours. Then the hat, then the boots. Body words stick when a child finds them in two places, and a beard on a toy soldier gets a laugh.
- Do the buttons one at a time. Small circles in a straight row. Count them out loud as each one is finished.
- Stripe the hat band and the trouser stripes in two colours. This one, then that one, all the way along. A pattern a child can see coming.