Thanksgiving Activity Sheets for Kids
Thanksgiving Day has a gap in it. Dinner is at four, the turkey went in at nine, and somewhere around noon the kids have run out of things to do and started opening the oven to look at it. These are the printables I keep on hand for exactly that stretch – scavenger hunts, color by number, a turkey you blow up with a straw – and most of them are free.
Not sure which one to print?
Pick by who you are trying to keep busy.
- Toddlers and young preschoolers (2–4) – Blow Up the Turkey and Pin the Peg on the Turkey. Both are hands and breath rather than pencil control. They will need you sitting with them.
- Preschool and kindergarten (4–6) – Pilgrim Salon and the 20 coloring pages. Scissors and crayons, no reading required.
- Early elementary (6–8) – the scavenger hunt and color by number. These are the two that genuinely buy you thirty minutes.
- A mixed group of cousins – print the scavenger hunt for everyone and let the big kids read the clues to the little ones.
- The whole of November, not just the day – the November activity checklist and the 15+ activity bundle.
Print the night before. Printing on Thanksgiving morning is how you discover you are out of ink.
The Thanksgiving printables
Every one of these opens on its own page where you can grab it. Print in black and white if you are rationing color ink – the coloring pages are meant to be black and white anyway, and the kids are about to color them.
Blow Up the Turkey
A paper turkey face that tapes onto a disposable glove. Your child blows through a straw and the glove inflates into five fat turkey fingers. It gets a genuine laugh the first time, and then they want to do it again immediately.
15+ Thanksgiving Activities
The bundle, if you would rather print one thing and be done. Scissor skills, coloring, tracing and fine motor pages in one download. This is the one to use if you have more than one age in the house, because there is something in it for each of them.
Pin the Peg on the Turkey
Pin the Tail on the Donkey, except the tail is a clothespin and the donkey is a turkey. Clipping a peg takes a real pinch, which is the same grip they will later use to hold a pencil, so this one is quietly doing something useful while it looks like a party game.
Pilgrim Salon
A pilgrim with a full head of paper hair that your child gets to cut. Snipping along a line is one of the harder scissor skills, and the fact that the pilgrim ends up with a terrible haircut is the point rather than a problem.
20 Thanksgiving Coloring Pages
Twenty pages, which sounds like a lot until you have three kids and they each want their own. Print the whole set and leave it in the middle of the table with a tub of crayons, and it becomes the thing people drift back to between courses.
Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt
The one I reach for when the kitchen is at its worst and I need everybody somewhere else. It sends them around the house looking for things rather than sitting at a table, which matters when they have been sitting all morning.
Thanksgiving Color By Number
Quieter and longer than plain coloring, because they have to keep checking the key. If you only print one thing for a five to eight year old on Thanksgiving Day, make it this one – it holds attention for longer than anything else here.
November Activity Checklist
Not a Thanksgiving Day thing – a whole month thing. One small seasonal activity to tick off at a time, so November has a bit of shape to it instead of being the long gray stretch before December. Stick it on the fridge at the start of the month.
Thankful Tree
Print the tree, cut out the twenty-five leaves, and have everyone write one thing they are thankful for. The little ones say the funniest things, and it is the one craft that ends up in a box in the attic rather than the trash. Free.
The one that needs more than a printer
The Blow Up the Turkey printable is the only one here that turns into a craft. You tape the feathers to a disposable glove, band it over a cup, push a straw through the side, and the kids blow it up into a turkey. It takes about five minutes and it doubles as an air pressure demonstration.
It has its own page now, with the full method, the video and a troubleshooting section.
How to make the blow up turkey
When to pull each one out on the day
Printing them is the easy part. Knowing when to hand one over is what actually gets you through to dinner. This is roughly how our Thanksgiving goes, with a four o’clock meal.
A rough running order
Adjust for your own dinner time.
- Morning, while the turkey goes in – nothing. Let them be bored for a bit. If you spend your best material at nine in the morning you will have nothing left at two.
- Late morning – the blow up turkey or pin the peg. Loud, physical, quick. Good for burning off the energy that has been building since they woke up.
- Around noon – the scavenger hunt. Sends them out of the kitchen for a decent stretch at the exact moment you need the kitchen.
- Early afternoon, guests arriving – the coloring pages in the middle of the table. Low effort, easy for a cousin or a grandparent to join in on.
- The last hour before dinner – color by number. This is the hardest hour and it needs the quietest, longest activity you have.
- At the table, waiting for food – whatever is left, plus a tablecloth they can draw on if you have one.
The one rule I would hold onto: don’t put everything out at once. Six printables spread across the day works. Six printables in a pile at eleven in the morning gets looked at for four minutes and then abandoned.
If you are hosting and want more than printables, the kids’ table ideas post covers the table itself – what to cover it with, what to feed them, and how to set it up so they stay in their seats.
A few things worth buying
These are the non-printable ones we have actually used.
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- Wooden Thanksgiving Puzzle Set – matching turkeys, owls and hedgehogs. Good for the youngest child at the gathering, who cannot do any of the paper activities yet.
- Inflatable Turkey Ring Toss – someone wears the inflatable turkey hat and everyone else throws rings at them. Works indoors, works with adults, works with a wide age range.
- Our Giant Thanksgiving Coloring Paper Roll – six feet of turkeys, pumpkins, pies and fall leaves that unrolls straight down the middle of the table. This is ours, and it is the single best thing on this list for a long wait before food.
- Gobble Wobble Board Book – an interactive book that has toddlers wiggling like a turkey. For the one child too small for everything else.
Questions parents ask
Are these actually free?
What do I need to print them?
What is the best one for a two year old?
How long will these actually keep kids busy?
Can I use these in a classroom?
What if I only have time for one?
More Thanksgiving ideas
All activities should be supervised by an adult. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.