Thanksgiving Coloring Pages

Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November, and the hours before dinner are exactly the gap a coloring page is built to fill. These 15 Thanksgiving coloring pages cover turkeys, harvest tables, cornucopias and the parade, with enough range that a three year old and a grandparent can work side by side. Every design downloads as a free printable PDF sized for US Letter paper, 8.5 by 11 inches.

What Is in the Collection

Turkeys are the most requested subject. Turkey With a Full Elaborate Feather Display, Turkey Standing Among Pumpkins and Autumn Leaves, Turkey Trying to Run Away From the Thanksgiving Feast and Thanksgiving Turkey.

Family and table scenes carry the meaning of the day. Family Sitting Down to a Thanksgiving Feast Table, Family Holding Hands in Prayer Around a Dinner Table, Children Helping Prepare Thanksgiving Dinner and Autumn Leaves Blowing Around a Harvest Dinner Table.

Harvest imagery gives the set its color. Cornucopia Overflowing With Autumn Harvest Fruits, Harvest Pumpkins and Gourds Decorative Display, Scarecrow in a Field of Autumn Crops, Apple and Pumpkin Pies Cooling on a Windowsill and Pilgrim Hat and Cornucopia Decoration.

Two more complete it: Children Making Thanksgiving Hand Turkey Crafts and Thanksgiving Parade With Floats and a Marching Band.

Who These Pages Are For

The simple sheets suit ages 3 to 7, with the turkey feather display and the cornucopia as the easiest starting points, since both are essentially a set of large shapes to fill.

The detailed sheets add crowds, table settings and fine harvest texture, and suit ages 8 and up. Teachers use these in the week before the holiday, and the turkey pages support a genuinely useful lesson about the difference between a wild turkey and the domestic bird. The place-setting angle is worth knowing: several of these work as table decoration if printed on cardstock. See also Fall.

Printing and Coloring Tips

Use the turkey tail as a color-naming exercise with young children. Each tail feather is a separate shape, so ask a child to name each color as they use it and to avoid repeating any. It turns one shape into ten small decisions.

Stay inside the autumn palette on the harvest pages. Burnt orange, gold, deep red, brown and one muted green will make the whole page hang together. Adding bright blue or purple to a harvest scene is the fastest way to break the mood.

Print on 65 lb cardstock if you want to use finished pages as place cards or table decoration, which is the most common use for these in November. Cardstock stands up on a table where copy paper flops over.

Want the bird on its own? The turkey coloring pages set has 15 sheets devoted to it, including a hand turkey outline and two realistic wild turkeys.

More line art in this direction: Fall, Farm Animals and Nature Forests. The other November date is Veterans Day, on 11 November, three weeks before the table gets laid.

Pumpkins run through every part of this holiday, from the porch step to the pie. Our pumpkin coloring pages give them fifteen sheets of their own, including a wheelbarrow harvest scene and an autumn leaf wreath that cuts out neatly for a door.