This post contains affiliate links. If you grab one of the printables I recommend, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Every October I do the same thing. The kitchen table gets cleared, the good markers come out of hiding, and I print a stack of coloring pages before anyone asks. My niece showed up the first Saturday in October last year, peeled off her shoes at the door, and went straight for the crayon bin like she lived here.
Coloring is the cheap part of the season that nobody brags about. A few sheets, some markers you already own, maybe a pot of cocoa if the rain holds you inside. I print mine on plain copy paper for the little kids because they press hard and the paper is going in the recycling by dinner anyway. Save the 65 lb stock for the pages someone wants to keep.
A few of the files I rounded up below are ones I actually ran through my printer, and yes, some links are affiliate links from an indie design shop, so if you grab one I get a tiny cut. Costs you nothing extra. Grab the markers.
The Cat Book That Bought Me Forty Quiet Minutes
My nephew is a cat kid. Not a dog kid, not a ghost kid, a cat kid, and he will tell you so. This one is a whole book of Halloween cats, witch cats in pointy hats, fat cats on pumpkins, and he went through six pages before he looked up.
I printed the lot on copy paper and stapled the corner so the sheets stayed together. He colored every cat black, every single one, which is not how the page was drawn but who am I to argue with a four-year-old’s vision.
One small thing. A couple of the cats have thin whiskers that a fat crayon just rolls right over. Hand the older kids the markers for those pages and let the toddlers do the chunky pumpkins.
Soft and Round, Nothing to Scare the Two-Year-Old
Some Halloween art is too pointy for the very small ones. This book leans the other way, everything rounded off, friendly ghosts with big eyes, smiling bats. My friend brought her toddler over and he is at the age where a scary face means an instant meltdown, so this is what I put in front of him.
The lines are thick, which is the whole reason it works for tiny hands. He scribbled mostly outside the shapes and was thrilled with himself. That is the goal at two.
My one nitpick is the pages are pretty similar from one to the next, so if you are printing a big batch it can feel a little samey. Mix it in with another set and nobody notices.
Pages Sweet Enough to Tape on the Fridge After
There is a category of coloring page that is really decor in disguise. You color it, it is genuinely cute, and it ends up on the fridge until Thanksgiving. This set is that. Pumpkins with little faces, candy corn, the kind of thing my sister’s kid was proud to show off.
I printed two of these on the heavier paper because I had a feeling they would get framed, and sure enough one is still magneted to the freezer door in June. Nobody has the heart to take it down.
The download came as a PDF that opened fine and printed at full size with no fiddling. The only catch is one page had a lot of fine detail in the background, more of a big-kid page than a toddler one.
When Coloring Alone Won’t Hold Them, Add Mazes
There comes a point on a long rainy afternoon when plain coloring stops working and you need a maze, a word search, something with a goal. This pack mixes activities in with the coloring, so it bought me a second wind around hour two of the craft afternoon.
I printed the maze pages for the older cousins and the coloring pages for the little ones, which kept everybody at their own level at the same table. The dot-to-dot was the surprise hit. Nobody saw that coming.
Fair warning, a few of the puzzles are aimed at kids who can already read, so screen them first if your crowd is mostly preschool. I just set those pages aside for the seven-year-old.
The Big Bundle for When the Whole Cousin Crew Shows Up
Thanksgiving-week math, except for Halloween. When you have got six kids of wildly different ages around one table, you do not want to run out of pages halfway through. This is a bundle, a fat one, and that is the entire point of buying it.
I keep a stack pre-printed in a folder by the door so when the relatives roll in I am not standing at the printer while a kid tugs my sleeve. Print once, use all season. Way cheaper than buying coloring books at the store every visit.
The one downside of a bundle this size is figuring out which pages are which when you print them all at once. I scribbled little numbers in the corner so I could find the cute ones again fast.
Big Eyes, Tiny Ghosts, Instant Kid Approval
Kawaii is a magic word in my house. The minute the pages have giant sparkly eyes and a little blush, my niece is in. This set is exactly that, round ghosts and pumpkins with the cheek dots, and she colored a ghost bright pink with zero shame.
These print clean on regular paper and the linework is bold enough that a wobbly hand still gets a good-looking result. That matters more than people think when the colorer is five.
My only gripe, some of the cutest pages have a lot of empty white space around the character. Not a real problem, but a marker-happy kid will want to fill that in, so maybe show them how to add stars or just let them go wild.
Twenty Pages, One Tidy File, Done in a Click
Sometimes you do not want a sprawling bundle, you want a clean count. Twenty pages, a known quantity, easy to print front to back the night before a party. I grabbed this one for a classroom thing my partner volunteered us for, and twenty was the exact right number for the group.
The variety inside is solid, a witch, a haunted house, bats, the usual cast, so no kid got stuck with a boring sheet. I printed all twenty in one go and the printer did not jam, which around here counts as a small miracle.
Nitpick time. A few pages run a little detailed for the youngest kids, so I dealt those to the older table. Easy fix, just look before you hand them out.
A Whole Cute Book to Staple and Hand Over
This is a full kawaii book rather than a loose handful of pages, which changes how I use it. I print it, fold it, staple the spine, and suddenly the kid has a real little book to flip through instead of a pile of sheets that slide off the table.
My nephew treats the stapled version like a treasure and carries it room to room, which means I find half-colored ghost pages under the couch in November. Worth it.
The pages are uniform in size, so the stapling actually lines up, which is not always true with mixed sets. Only thing I would change is I wish the cover page were a touch sturdier, so I print just that one on heavier paper.
More Sparkle-Eyed Pages for the Repeat Offenders
If you have a kid who blows through a coloring set in one afternoon, you learn to keep a backup of the same style on hand. This is my second kawaii stash, similar friendly vibe but different characters, so it feels new even though it scratches the same itch.
I pulled these out a week into October when the first batch was used up and my niece had not lost interest. The fresh faces reset her enthusiasm completely. Same printer, same plain paper, no setup headaches.
The only thing to flag is the style overlaps a lot with the other kawaii set, so if you already own one, check before you double up. For a heavy colorer, though, more is exactly the point.
Friendly Ghosts for the Kid Who Doesn’t Like Scary
Ghosts can go two ways, creepy or cuddly, and for the little crowd you want cuddly. These are the smiling, googly-eyed kind, the sort my friend’s shy toddler will actually sit with instead of pushing away. He named one of them Bob.
I ran these off on copy paper for the porch craft afternoon and the bold ghost outlines held up even when a determined two-year-old scribbled straight through the lines. That is the test, honestly.
My one quibble is the set is all ghosts, so it can get repetitive across a long session. I shuffled a few pumpkin pages in from another file and that kept the table happy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do kids get halloween off school?
Nope, Halloween is not a holiday, so school runs as usual. It lands on a regular day and the kids go in like always, sometimes with a costume parade if the teacher is feeling brave.
That is partly why I print coloring pages the night before. It is a normal Thursday with a sugar high waiting at the end, and a quiet activity after school helps everyone cool down before the candy chaos starts.
Do kids celebrate halloween in japan?
Sort of, but differently. Halloween in Japan grew up more as a young-adult costume-and-street-party thing, big in places like Shibuya, rather than the door-to-door trick-or-treating little kids do here.
Kids there do dress up and there are events, especially at theme parks and schools, but the candy-at-the-neighbor’s-door tradition is not the default the way it is in the States.
Do kids have halloween off?
They do not get the day off for it. October 31 is a normal school day, and the celebrating happens in the evening once everyone is home and the costumes come out.
The one upside for parents, a calm coloring session right after school is a great way to bridge the gap between the last bell and the front-door candy run.
Do kids get halloween off?
Same answer, no day off. Halloween is not on the official holiday list, so the school calendar treats it like any other day at the end of October.
If you want the day to feel special anyway, a stack of printed pages and a bowl of candy corn does the job for the under-ten set without anybody needing a vacation day.
Before You Print
Here is what I learned after a few Octobers of this. Print more than you think you need, keep it cheap for the toddlers, and save one heavy sheet for the page somebody will want to frame. The fridge page is still up at my sister’s house in June.
Light a pumpkin candle, dump the markers in the middle of the table, and let them go. The best ones end up taped crooked on the fridge by November, and that is exactly where they belong.