Printable Dog Patterns With Simple Shapes for Kids' Crafts

Dogs and kids just go together and many times, printable dog shapes are essential to any pet activities or units you do with preschoolers and elementary kids.

For this article, I’ve created some printable templates that you can use as coloring sheets, decorations, bookmarks, or puppets. I’ve mainly focused on using simple shapes that children can easily identify, though I’ve also included some more intricate designs like the Shar-Pei and the Chinese Crested.

All of the patterns here were created by me, and permission is given to print these templates for personal and educational use. Commercial use is prohibited.

The images here are all loaded as photos (jpegs). To “pick up” any of these images, click on the pattern image, and then right click to copy it and paste it into a word processing or publishing software. Once you’ve pasted it, you can then enlarge or minimize the image the way you'd like.

This is one of the simplest dogs to draw. Children can draw an oval for the head and an oval on either side for the ears. Draw eyes and a nose, and they’re done. But, if you’d like a pattern, here is one that you can print and cut out to make a dog.

It’s pretty cool what you can do with a big circle and a bunch of ovals. This little dog is ready to play with his favorite toy.

This pattern includes a little 3-D effect. Color the ears, then glue them on to the head.

Here’s another variation of a dog with ears that stand out.

This dog uses a couple of irregular shapes for the ears, but is still basically an oval with some simple shapes for the face.

I bought this pattern with a Chinese Zodiac set. I know you can also think of it as a cat, but it could also be a dog with perky (and maybe catlike) ears. I was drawn to it because kids do love to make things out of heart shapes.

Here is a dog that is ovals all the way. Cut out the face and ears and assemble for a quick dog.

I made the same pattern with open ears in case you want a color other than black.

This little dog reminds me of a West Highland Terrier. Color and cut to assemble your own little Westie.

This dog is a little more in a cartoon style, still using mostly circles and ovals.

This fella shows what you can do when you put a couple of circles together.

Here’s a little dog, reminiscent of a Scottie that you can make by putting together a variety of straight-edged shapes

You can make a dog face out of almost any shape. Here, the square forms the head and ovals are the ears.

Here’s the little Westie face, back again on a dog with can stand up. Be sure to print or trace it on to card stock.

Shar-Peis are such adorably wrinkly dogs. Follow the pattern to draw on this dog's face.

I couldn’t resist doing an outline of a Chinese Crested. They don’t have a lot of hair, but they sure make use of what they’ve got, with unruly tufts all around the face.

Once again, the tufts of hair at the tail, face, and legs serve to make this an adorable dog.

You can also fold an origami dog to use in any projects with kids. Here are a couple of the videos I found that show simple ways to fold a dog.