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My friend has twins. Five years old, loud, and capable of unraveling a holiday in under four minutes if you do not hand them something to do the second they walk in. So every November I print them a stack. Coloring pages, a clipboard each, a fistful of crayons that are already broken because crayons are always already broken.
This year the plan was bigger. The drive to grandma’s is two hours of complaining, and the kids’ table at dinner is its own kind of marathon, so I wanted enough pages to cover both. I went heavy on bright primaries because that is what the twins reach for, red and blue and the kind of yellow that runs out first. A few of the best ones I laminated so they could wipe them and start over, which sounds smart until you are standing at the laminator at 9pm feeding it one sheet at a time.
Most of these started as files from an indie design shop, printed at home on my own tired printer. Some of the links below are affiliate links, so if you grab one I might get a small cut. Costs you nothing. Here is what made it into the stack.
The Easy Pages That Bought Me Twenty Quiet Minutes
This was the first thing I printed and the twins went straight for it. Big shapes, thick outlines, nothing fussy. A five-year-old can stay inside those lines for about half a page before going rogue, and that is exactly the point. Simple enough that nobody handed me a crayon and said “I can’t.”
I ran a dozen of these for the car. Clipboard, page, three crayons, done. They held up to backseat scribbling and one juice incident. I would print on regular copy paper for these, honestly, since they get demolished anyway and you go through them fast.
One nitpick. A couple of the designs in the bundle have very wide open areas, which is great for little hands but a crayon-eater. We were down to nubs of red by the time we hit grandma’s driveway.
The Nicer Set I Saved For The Actual Table
These felt a step up from the car pages, so I held them back for dinner. Cleaner line work, a bit more detail in the borders, the sort of page that looks decent propped against a water glass once it is colored in.
I printed these on slightly heavier paper, the 65 lb stuff, so they did not buckle when a marker showed up at the table instead of a crayon. They sat flat on the clipboards and survived the gravy zone, which is more than I can say for some of my place cards over the years.
The nitpick: this one is built for a book layout, so a few pages have a wide inner margin that looks like wasted space when you print them as singles. I shifted mine over before printing so the turkey was not crowding the left edge.
A Plain Stack That Did More Work Than Expected
Nothing flashy in the thumbnail. Turkeys, leaves, the usual cast. I almost scrolled past it. But plain is what you want when you are printing volume, and I needed volume.
This is the set I leaned on to bulk out the clipboard piles. The twins do not care if a page is fancy, they care that there is another one when the first is done, and there was always another one. I ran a big batch of these and just kept them in a folder by the door.
My gripe is that the line weight is a touch thin on a few designs, so on my printer with low ink the outlines came out faint and the kids colored over where the lines should be. Print these while your cartridge is still healthy.
The Set I Laminated For Round Two
These were the ones I picked to laminate. Sturdy designs, not too detailed, the kind that look fine even when a kid scribbles a purple sky over the whole thing. I ran four through the laminator and handed them out with washable markers so the twins could wipe and redo.
Worth saying: laminating a few as reusables saved me at the dinner table. When one twin “finished” in ninety seconds, a quick wipe and she was off again. No new page, no new crayon hunt.
Nitpick is the lamination, not the file. The marker ink beads on the plastic and needs a second to set or it smears across the page on the next stroke. I learned that the hard way when a wiped turkey turned into a blue smudge mid-drive.
Fifty-Four Pages For The Kid Who Colors Outfits, Not Turkeys
One of the twins is less interested in pumpkins and more interested in clothes, so this set was for her. Fall outfits, boots, hats, the whole closet. Fifty-four pages means you are not going to run dry, which for a determined five-year-old is the actual win.
I printed maybe fifteen of these and she went through them like a stylist on a deadline. Bright primaries again, because that is what was in the crayon box, and somehow a red coat over blue jeans looks great every single time.
The nitpick: with fifty-four pages it is tempting to print the lot, and I nearly did before I caught myself. Print a sampler first. A lot of the detail is small, fiddly stuff that a five-year-old ignores anyway, so you do not need all of them on paper.
Pumpkins For The One Who Only Wanted Pumpkins
The other twin is a pumpkin loyalist. Will not color a turkey, will not color a leaf, only pumpkins, and lots of them. This set is exactly that, so it went in her pile and nowhere else.
These have a nice range, some chunky single pumpkins for the car and some busier patch scenes for when she had a flat table at grandma’s. I printed the simple ones single-sided for the road and the detailed ones for dinner.
My one complaint is that a few of the pumpkin scenes have a lot of fine vine detail crammed in the corners, which a young kid just colors straight over. I would have liked one or two even simpler pages in the mix for the youngest hands.
The Mixed Bag I Used To Top Off Every Pile
Half Thanksgiving, half general fall, which made this my filler set. When a clipboard pile looked thin, I grabbed a few of these to even it out. Turkeys for the theme, leaves and acorns for the kid who wanted a break from turkeys.
I kept a stack of these by the door and just dealt them out like cards as we packed for the drive. Nobody noticed they were the in-between pages. They colored them just as happily as the fancy ones.
Nitpick: this is an older-looking set and a couple of designs felt a bit busier than the rest, more lines than a five-year-old wants. Those stayed in the folder. The simple ones did all the work.
Made For Little Hands, And It Showed
This one is clearly aimed at kids and you can feel it. Friendly shapes, big spaces, the kind of page where a toddler could mash a crayon around and still end up with something that looks like a turkey. For the twins it was easy mode, which is great for the tail end of a long day.
I saved these for the car ride home, when everyone was tired and nobody had the patience for detail. Clipboard, broken crayon, one big happy turkey, peace for fifteen minutes.
The nitpick is that with such big open shapes, you really do burn through crayons. We were rationing the red by the time we got back. Pack a backup box if you are printing a lot of these.
The Off-Theme Pages I Snuck In Anyway
Not strictly Thanksgiving, I know. But one of the twins is deep in a firefighter phase, and a holiday is long, and sometimes you give the kid the thing they actually want. So sixteen community helper pages came along for the ride.
These bought me real goodwill on the drive. A firefighter page when she was bored of pumpkins reset her whole mood. I printed a handful, clipped them in among the fall pages, and let her find them like little surprises.
Nitpick, and it is a small one: the helpers come with a bit of background detail that is not super kid-simple, so the youngest of the two needed a hand starting. Once she was going it was fine, but it is not a hand-it-over-and-walk-away page.
The Scarecrow Page That Closed Out The Stack
I ended the stack with scarecrows because they are harvest-y without being another turkey, and by the fourth turkey even a five-year-old wants something else. These have a nice friendly scarecrow-in-the-field look that read clearly once colored.
I laminated one of these too, since the scarecrow shape holds up well to a wipe and redo. It became the page they fought over, which I am choosing to count as a compliment to the file.
The nitpick is the field detail. Some pages have a lot of little stalks and straw lines, and a young kid either ignores them or colors the whole field one solid brown. I picked the simpler scarecrow pages for the twins and left the detailed ones for me, honestly, because I wanted one too.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long is kids thanksgiving break?
It depends on the school, but most kids get the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through the Friday after, so a long weekend stretched to about five days off. Some districts give the whole week.
Which is the real reason I print a stack this size. Five days of “I’m bored” plus a two-hour drive to grandma’s needs more than four coloring pages, trust me.
Can I print these at home?
Yes, that is the whole point. I print all of mine at home on a fairly tired printer, regular copy paper for the car pages and slightly heavier 65 lb paper for the ones that sit on the dinner table.
One tip from my own mistake: I printed my first batch single-sided and then realized printing double-sided would have saved me a stack of paper. With this many pages it adds up, so flip on the double-sided setting before you hit print.
What file formats do these designs come in?
These are ready-to-print coloring pages, so you download them and send them straight to your printer at home or at the library. No design software needed.
If you want a page bigger or smaller, you can scale it in the print dialog before printing. I shrunk a few to fit on the kids’ clipboards.
Do I need a Cricut or Silhouette to use these?
No machine required. These are coloring pages, not cut files, so all you need is a printer and a box of crayons that are probably already broken.
The only extra gear I used was a laminator, and that was just to make a few of them reusable. Totally optional. You can skip it and reprint instead.
Before You Print
By the time we pulled into grandma’s, both twins had a clipboard full of colored turkeys and pumpkins and one very orange firefighter. The car was quiet for most of the drive, which is the actual miracle I was buying.
If you do one thing differently than I did, print double-sided from the start. I figured it out a whole stack of wasted paper too late, standing over the printer wondering why I was already out. Print a fat pile, laminate two, pack extra red crayons.
