Painted Pumpkins

This was a great rainy day activity a few weeks ago on a dreary Saturday afternoon. And although we did it as a lead up to Halloween, it would also be a great way to use any pumpkins that were not carved on Halloween.

Another great part of this activity is that it can be enjoyed by a variety of ages. We painted the pumpkins with our cousins, so the age range on this activity day were one 3 year old, two 6 year olds, and one 10 year old. Everybody took it to their own level and everyone loved their finished product. 

Jack O'lantern Suncatcher

Still looking for some quick and easy Halloween projects? This Jack O'lantern Suncatcher is not too messy and is quick to put together.

Little Brother and I enjoyed making it recently and we love the Halloween color it adds to our window!

Pumpkin Patch Candy Counting

We love finding ways to use holiday candy in learning games and activities. In the past we've used candy hearts and jelly beans to practice different math skills. So of course it was time to do something with fall candy!

As Little Brother is getting a little older, he's been getting really interested in counting and numbers, so I put together this Pumpkin Patch counting activity using candy pumpkins. I decided we would work on the numbers 1 to 5.

Pound A Pumpkin

A few weeks ago Big Brother participated in this activity at preschool, and loved it so much we had to recreate it at home. We've used it as a way to get out some extra energy now that the afternoons are cooler and shorter, and it's a little harder to get outside. It's perfect for using up any pumpkins left over from Halloween.

The materials are simple a pumpkin, golf tees, and toy hammers. Ahead of time a grown-up could poke holes into the pumpkin although we found it pretty easy to pound the tees in without preset holes. 

Big Brother would get the tee started by twisting it in and then use the hammer to pound the tee further in. 

Older kids could work on designing patterns but Big Brother just enjoyed getting the tees into the pumpkin. He even pounded one into the stem. We did find we could pretty easily use our fingers to pull them back out if we wanted to. Using the tee and the hammer both promote fine and gross motor skills. 

Not an idea we can take credit for, but it definitely got a lot of play time in our house. 

This post may also have been shared at some of these terrific link parties. 

Pumpkin Plate Shaker

This was another quick, fun pumpkin project we completed this week. To make it I gathered a few things we had around the house: paper plates, black construction paper, dried beans, orange paint, glue, and curling ribbon.

First, Big Brother painted the back side of the plates orange. We let them dry overnight.

The next afternoon I cut some black construction paper into triangle pieces and a jack-o-lantern mouth piece and Big Brother glued them onto the plate.

We taped the curling ribbon to the inside of one of the plates. We then filled the plate with a handful of dried beans. Ideally it would have been better to use dried pumpkin seeds as we talked about what was inside a real pumpkin, but we didn't have any on hand. 

Afterwards we stapled the two plates together with the orange sides out. Big Brother had a lot of fun making noise with it, shaking it, and banging it like a tambourine. These would be especially fun to use at a Halloween parade! 

This post may also have been shared at some of these terrific link parties. 

Five Little Pumpkin Handprints

Although we've already been doing a lot of baking with canned pumpkins this fall our Alphabet Adventure this weekend kicked off some fun pumpkin craft activities this week.

We based our first project around the Five Little Pumpkins rhyme. We really like the Raffi version we download a while back, but you can find many versions online. Here's the version we've been using:

Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate. 

The first one said, "Oh my it's getting late!"

The second one said, "There are witches in the air!""

The third one said, "But we don't care!"

The fourth one said, "Let's run and run and run!"

The fifth one said, "I'm ready for some fun!"

Ooooh went the wind . . . 

and out went the lights.

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight. 

After we'd listened to it a few times this week and added in some hand motions I thought it would be fun to do an extension project. We decided to do some handprint painting. 

Rather than paint his whole hand, which wouldn't look very pumpkin like, we just painted his palm orange and one finger green. 

We printed his hand five times and then we mixed the green and orange paint to make brown. Big Brother painted in a gate. 

We let the paint dry for about an hour. When we returned to the project we added in googly eyes and used black Sharpie marker to create noses and mouths. The last two pumpkins even got long "tongues."

At the end Big Brother used our large star punch to cut out purple and yellow stars to add to the sky. 

The best part of this project was how he really liked it and kept repeating the rhyme as he worked. 

This post may also have been shared at some of these terrific link parties.