Three sheets that differ only in how many snowflakes are on them: five at mixed sizes, three larger ones, or a single flake running nearly to the margins. Every flake is generated when the page loads, built from one arm repeated six times round a hexagon centre, so no two printouts come out the same.
Five, three or one
The five flake sheet has one detailed snowflake filling the middle and four smaller plain ones out at the corners. That gives a child somewhere obvious to start and somewhere to stop. The three flake sheet drops the extra detail and makes each flake much bigger, one above and two below.
The single flake is the one worth printing at the fine line weight. Six arms, a hexagon at the centre, two or three pairs of branches on every arm with a small twig coming off each branch, and a diamond or a circle at each of the six tips. It is the only one of the three an adult would sit down with for an hour.
These are for colouring, not for cutting
There are five other snowflake pages on the site and they do a different job. The template sheet is plain cut lines with a six pointed hole through the middle, the fold and cut sheet prints the creases on a square so you can make one out of folded paper, the large sheet is a single flake for a window, and the outline sheet is an empty shape for tracing round.
These three have pattern inside the line, which is the last thing you want when you are following a shape with scissors and the first thing you want when you are filling it in with a pen. If you came here looking for something to cut out, the template page is the one you want.
Why all six arms match
Each flake is worked out once as a single arm and then repeated six times at sixty degrees, so the branch positions, the decoration halfway out and the shape at the tip are identical the whole way round. Real snowflakes do this, and a hand cut paper one does it because of the folds. It is also the thing that stops a drawn snowflake looking like a star with bits on it.
Questions
- How many snowflakes are on a sheet?
- Five, three or one, depending which entry you pick in the Picture list. The five flake sheet mixes one large snowflake with four small ones, and the single flake nearly fills the page.
- Are the snowflake patterns the same every time?
- No. Each one is generated when the page loads and again whenever you press Redraw, so a sheet can be printed for every child in a class without two patterns matching.
- How are these different from the snowflake templates?
- These are drawings to colour in, with pattern inside the outline. The template pages are plain cut lines with a hole through the middle, made for scissors rather than for pencils.
- Which snowflake sheet suits an adult?
- The single large flake at the Fine line weight. It carries two or three pairs of branches on each of its six arms, with a twig off every branch and a shape at every tip.
- Are these snowflake colouring pages free?
- Yes. All three print and download free with no account and no watermark, and a school may print as many copies as a class needs.