November
How to play and solve Thanksgiving word searches
Thanksgiving is the one seasonal word search that is asked to do two jobs at once. Half the list is a meal, which anybody can picture. The other half is a history unit and a set of abstract nouns about gratitude, which is a different task wearing the same clothes.
How to play a Thanksgiving word search
- Every word in the list is hidden in the grid, in a straight line.
- On Easy, words run across and down only; harder sheets add diagonals, then backward words.
- Find each word, ring it in the grid, and cross it off the list.
- The answer key on the second page shows every word ringed.
How to find Thanksgiving words faster, step by step
Most people look for a word's first letter. Look for its rarest letter instead. Here is a Hard Thanksgiving grid from this page, where words run in all eight directions, and the word CRANBERRY.
Step 1. C starts the word, but there are 11 of them in this grid. B is the rarest letter in CRANBERRY: only 2. Shade them.
Step 2. In the word, E sits next to B. Check the eight squares around each B: only one has an E beside it.
Step 3. Follow the line from there in both directions. CRANBERRY runs right to left, backward. Ring it and cross it off.
When you are stuck
- Start with the odd letters. On this list, MAIZE, PUMPKIN, SQUASH, TURKEY and BLANKET each have a J, K, Q, X or Z, and those letters have few hiding places.
- Go row by row with a finger or a ruler, so your eye does not jump.
- Check backward. On Hard and Expert, a word you cannot find may be running right to left or upward.
- Save the short words for last. By then most squares are already ringed.
Why half of this list is harder than it looks for an English language learner
That matters most in a classroom with English language learners in it, and it is why this page separates the two rather than shuffling them together and hoping.
A word search is usually a safe activity for a learner who is still building vocabulary, because finding a word is letter matching and does not require knowing what it means. Thanksgiving breaks that assumption in a specific way: it is one of the few seasonal lists where a large share of the words cannot be pictured, guessed from context, or explained in one sentence.
PILGRIM, MAYFLOWER, SETTLER and HARVEST are not vocabulary problems, they are background-knowledge problems. A child can find MAYFLOWER in a grid perfectly and leave the lesson with nothing, because the word is a proper noun attached to a story they have not been told. GRATITUDE, BLESSING and THANKFUL are the other kind: abstract nouns that a bilingual dictionary translates badly and a picture cannot carry at all.
The words are grouped below into the ones you can put a photograph next to and the ones you cannot. For a mixed-language class, building the sheet from the first group and teaching the second group separately is more useful than one sheet that quietly does neither. The grouping is a teaching judgment rather than a measurement, and it is offered as one.
Words you can put a picture next to: 31 words
Concrete nouns a learner can match to an object or a photograph without needing the history.
- Acorn
- Apple
- Bread
- Butter
- Casserole
- Cider
- Cinnamon
- Cranberry
- Dinner
- Family
- Gourd
- Gravy
- Maize
- Orchard
- Parade
- Potato
- Yams
- Pumpkin
- Recipe
- Squash
- Stuffing
- Turkey
- Wishbone
- Chestnut
- Nutmeg
- Pastry
- Platter
- Blanket
- Cornucopia
- Football
- Fall
The other 33, and why they are separate
These are on the full list rather than the default one. They are not harder to find; they are a different decision about the room you are printing for.
- Autumn
- Blessing
- Bountiful
- Carving
- Celebrate
- Colonist
- Feast
- Friends
- Gather
- Generous
- Gobble
- Grateful
- Gratitude
- Harvest
- Holiday
- Homemade
- Kindness
- Leftovers
- Mayflower
- November
- Pilgrim
- Plentiful
- Relatives
- Roasting
- Settler
- Sharing
- Thankful
- Tradition
- Travel
- Warmth
- Thanksgiving
- Wampanoag
- Plymouth
Both lists are checked when this site is built: every word is four to twelve letters, no word contains another word on the same list, and the default list is a true part of the full one. A word inside another word has no honest answer key, so that check fails the build rather than being repaired quietly at print time.
Which Thanksgiving word search to print
| Who it is for | Sheet | Settings | Squares that are part of a word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ages 5 to 7 | Easy | Easy, 10×10, 10 words, words you can put a picture next to | 57% |
| Young children who finish early | Easy, with pictures to color | Easy, 12×12, 12 words, words you can put a picture next to, outlines to color | 48% |
| Grades 2 to 5 | Medium | Medium, 14×14, 16 words, words you can put a picture next to | 40% |
| Teens and family tables | Hard | Hard, 16×16, 20 words, full list | 44% |
| Adults and puzzle fans | Expert, for adults | Expert, 20×20, 27 words, full list | 39% |
| Seniors and low vision | Large print | Easy, 12×12, 12 words, full list, large print | 54% |
Measured on the six sheets above, which the cards download.
- The level decides which way words run, and that is what makes a word hard to spot: Easy is across and down only, which a young child can scan one direction at a time.
- Grid size is not difficulty. A bigger grid is a longer hunt through more filler: 57% of the 10×10 sheet is part of a word, against 39% of the 20×20 one.
- Expert fills the empty squares with letters taken from the word list itself, so hunting for an unusual letter stops working.
- Large print with a smaller grid beats normal print with a bigger one for anyone working with a magnifier.
- Hidden message: turn it on in the builder and every square that is not part of a word holds a letter of "The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days", read across from the top row once all the words are found. Type your own instead for a class or a party; the message decides how many words fit.
Answer keys you can trust
- Every word appears exactly once. Each grid is scanned in all eight directions after it is filled, and a stray second copy made by the filler letters is broken up. The six sheets above were checked this way when this page was built.
- No word hides inside another. Two words where one contains the other never share a list, because finding one would find the other in squares the key does not ring.
- No rude words in the filler. Random letters read eight ways can spell things no one wants on a child's sheet. Every grid is checked in every direction and its filler changed until none remain.
- The key is page 2 of the same PDF, drawn from the same grid, so it cannot belong to a different puzzle.
- The key says where each word starts. Letters run across the top of its grid and numbers down the side, and each word in its list carries its first square and an arrow: APPLE I12 ↘ on the Hard sheet above. A key printed in gray still settles an argument.
Thanksgiving word search activities
The pictures, and when to switch them off
The Thanksgiving pictures along the top and bottom of the puzzle page are simple drawings made for this site. They sit in the page margins, so they never shrink the grid or the word list, and they stay off the answer key.
- In color is the default, and it is the one to use for a party table or a fridge door.
- Outlines to color in turns the border into something to color, which gives the child who finishes first something to do with the crayons. It also uses almost no ink.
- No pictures suits older students and adults, and anyone photocopying a class set who wants the cleanest copy.
Free to print, and what this page does not do
Every sheet is made in your browser and there is no account, so a pasted word list never leaves your computer. More in how we make puzzle packs. The terms of use let teachers, parents, clubs, libraries and senior centers print and copy the sheets and their answer keys.
- A hidden message needs a grid of 20×20 or smaller. The whole Thanksgiving list covers at most 456 squares, so on a 30×30 the message would need 444 letters or more.
- Your own word list keeps the pictures, but its words are not checked against the holiday list.