One hundred sharks, and not all of them are teeth: great whites and hammerheads alongside whale sharks, a nurse shark resting on the sand and a round baby shark small enough for a three year old to finish.
Most shark printables give you one shape: a grey triangle with teeth, over and over. These are built around the fact that sharks are not one animal. There are hammerheads with their wide flat heads, whale sharks covered in spots, a flat wide-bodied shark that looks nothing like the others, and a nurse shark lying still on the sand. Alongside them are the friendly ones for younger children, starting with design 2, a smiling cartoon shark facing straight at you.
Ways to use these
Start with the cartoon ones. Designs 2, 14, 34 and 39 are the smiling cartoon sharks. A five year old who is nervous about sharks will usually take one of these, and once it is coloured the realistic ones stop looking frightening.
The spots are the activity. On the whale shark pages, every spot is a separate enclosed area. Filling them one at a time keeps a child at the table far longer than a plain body would.
Pair a big one with a small one. The family designs put a large shark and two small ones on the same sheet, so two children can work on one page without arguing about who gets which.
Every design downloads as a US Letter PDF that also scales cleanly to A4 with
“Fit to printable area”. Print in grayscale, there is no color in the files. Ordinary copier
paper is fine for crayons and pencils; use cardstock or slip a spare sheet underneath for markers.
Free to print at home, in a classroom or in a library, see the license.
Frequently asked questions
Are these scary?
No. Even the great whites are drawn with rounded shapes and simple mouths rather than detailed teeth, and eight of the hundred are openly cartoon sharks with smiles. Nothing here is drawn to frighten a child.
Which page suits a very young child?
Design 39. A smiling cartoon shark in open water, where the background is just light rays rather than reef detail. Worth knowing before you print: every shark here sits in a scene rather than on a blank page, so there is always something in the background to colour.
Are the species real?
The shapes are based on real sharks, so the hammerhead has the wide head and the whale shark has the spotted back. They are simplified for colouring rather than drawn as field-guide illustrations.
Can I print a set for a class?
Yes. Print as many as you need, and see the licence for the full terms. Nothing here is based on a film or a branded character, so a class set carries no rights problem.
