Painting pumpkins is a great alternative to carving pumpkins that you can do with younger children and children that do not like the feel of pumpkin guts. This activity often follows a trip to the pumpkin patch and cleaning our pumpkins in our always fun pumpkin washing sensory bin! It’s a great way to clean pumpkins before you paint them!
The infants and toddlers in my home daycare love this activity!
Painting Pumpkins with Infants and Toddlers
I usually do this activity with the infants and toddlers in my home daycare but it also is perfect for older children that are not fans of carving pumpkins. My kindergartener does not like the feel and texture of pumpkin guts so we still do this activity with her in the fall. I prefer it because it means I don’t have to clean up the slimy guts and risk inflaming my eczema, which happens when I handle the insides of pumpkins.
Plus painted pumpkins are just super cute!
Materials for pumpkin process art:
- Paint
- Pumpkins
- Paint Brushes
- Paint Smocks or Shirts
I use acrylic paint usually with my older kids. While I do like tempera paint for my younger kids (under 15 months), I’ve found that typical finger paint or tempera paint tends to dry and then flake off of the pumpkins. I haven’t had that issue with acrylic paints. My older kids are more concerned with their fall art flaking off than the younger kids so I try to use acrylic paints and paint smocks with the older kids.
We have an outdoor art station where we usually do this activity. If you can’t do it outside I’d recommend putting down newspaper or doing it on a large table. My kids always get very messy doing this fall art project. They want to cover the whole pumpkin and moving it gets messy!
The kids had such a fun time painting pumpkins! They created some very colorful creations! We are going to use ours as table decorations for our Thanksgiving feast in my home daycare.
If you are doing this with older children you can make it a lesson in color mixing too! My toddlers noticed that the colors changed as we mixed them up but overall this was just a fun art project for them. When I do it with my daughter (5) we like to predict what colors we will make by mixing and see if we can create any new colors! It’s so fun!
Now it’s your turn! Go do a painting pumpkins project today!!
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