We’ve been painting pumpkins with kids every year, beginning when Maia was a year old and I had just started the first toddler art group. So it seemed right that we paint pumpkins again this year with the current group of little one.
It’s something little kids can totally get into—using paint and brushes (or hands) on 3-dimensional orange objects with ridges and stems. How fun!
And older kids enjoy it as well.
Plus the painted pumpkins don’t decay the way carved pumpkins do, so you can decorate your pumpkins earlier for Halloween decorations.
Painting Pumpkins With Kids
This photo of Daphne and Joe painting their pumpkins was taken before Daphne painted her hands black and began making handprints over her pumpkin and before Joe dumped a bowl of paint over his and used his hands to paint his.
Perhaps we should have just made it a fingerpainting activity… :)
By the way, we had a large turn-out for the toddler art group yesterday, but somehow I mostly just managed to take about fifty photos of Daphne and Joe. I’ll try to do better next time.
Best Paints for Pumpkin Painting with Kids
The paint we used is activity paint
from Discount School Supply. We’ve used tempera paintfor painting pumpkins in the past and it works fine, but does tend to crack and peel a bit after it dries. I chose the activity paint this time because it adheres to most surfaces without any cracking (it’s also great for spin art!). BioColor paint would work great, too.
If you have tempera paint though, go ahead and use it! Try mixing in a few drops of liquid dish soap to the tempera paint first to help it stick to the smooth surface.
I only put out black and white paints for the kiddos to make the painted pumpkins extra halloweeny.
They are rather modern-looking, too, don’t you think?
Have you tried painting pumpkins with kids yet?
More Halloween Art Ideas for Kids
- Marble Rolling Spiderwebs
- Spiders and Spiderwebs with Salty Watercolors
- Fill in the Jack-O-Lantern Faces Activity
- Spin Painting with Autumn Colors
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19 Comments
Renee
October 20, 2011 at 10:34 amClearly I need to get some activity paint!
We’ve done this every year since my daughter (4 1/2) was one too. I think we’ll even let baby brother (6 months) try his hand at it this year. It’s one of my favorite art activities of the year.
I like your choice of black and white because my natural inclination is to use bright and/or primary colors with toddlers, and I have to remind myself to branch out.
erin
October 20, 2011 at 12:07 pmThis looks awesome!
Is the activity paint washable at all? I would imagine not but you never know!
Thanks for the great inspiration :)
katie
October 20, 2011 at 12:15 pmKids might enjoy…stamping end of paper towel tube in paint and stamping on paper…pumpkins!!! Rip pieces of green and stick on to wet paint or glue for stems and leaves…pumpkin patch…wahlah!
Helen
October 20, 2011 at 1:30 pmHi Jean,
Have you recently changed your feed? I’m pretty sure that you had the full text of each post in the feed, but today I only got a very short excerpt. I’d love to have the full-text feed back, if possible.
molly
October 20, 2011 at 1:41 pmWe did this recently with glitter glue and it was a HUGE hit (and the pumpkins looked kind of awesome and golden). Also, adding a bit of glue to tempera helps it to be less cracky (that is certainly not a word), but I’ll have to try activity paint also — we haven’t used it before.
Jean Van't Hul
October 20, 2011 at 1:09 pmI don’t think it’s really washable out of fabric (the bottle says not to get it on fabric). But it washes off skin just fine. And it takes longer than most paints to dry so you can wash it off tables etc pretty easily.
Jean Van't Hul
October 20, 2011 at 1:09 pmSounds fun! Maybe I’ll set that up as our after-school activity today…
Jean Van't Hul
October 20, 2011 at 1:10 pmI know. I’m the same way. I always get out the red, blue, and yellow for the toddlers.
Jean Van't Hul
October 21, 2011 at 10:48 amOoh! Glitter glue would be fun! And adding glue to tempera paint sounds like a great way to keep it from cracking and peeling. Good idea!
Jean Van't Hul
October 21, 2011 at 10:50 amI’ve been playing around with the website a bit, trying to make the posts on the homepage shorter so it has a cleaner feel. I guess I changed the blog feed as well. Hmm. I’ll see what I can do.
Jean Van't Hul
October 21, 2011 at 11:18 amJust fixed it (I think). Hopefully the feed will be back to normal for the next post.
sarah
October 24, 2011 at 9:11 pmLast year we did this with washable paint and put the pumpkins outside. After the first big rain all the hard work washed away =( Now when we use the washable paint I let it dry then spray paint it with a clear coat of permanent paint. Seems to work like a charm. I love the black and white paint idea. Maybe we will do that tomorrow!
sarah
October 24, 2011 at 9:12 pmOn a side note, we made the bat garland and love it! Thanks for that one also.
Christy
October 27, 2011 at 12:51 pmI used watercolors last year for my then almost 2 year old daughter to paint a white pumpkin. she loved it, but the colors were too “watery”. This year I used tempra and she had a great time. We went to the pumpkin patch and got somemore so I think I’ll try the tempra with a little dish soap to see how that works because the first pumpkin paint is already starting to crack a bit (two weeks old now).
Kimberly
October 28, 2011 at 1:56 pmThis is so sweet and I really enjoy reading about how the toddlers painting experience. So often I get nervous energy around paint when it tends to get messy and find myself hovering about with a wet rag instructing my son to be careful. This is SUCH an excellent reminder to allow more freedom during creation and worry about the messy clean-up later.
Jael Point
October 29, 2011 at 9:59 pmIt just takes plenty of newspaper and an adults old button up shirt to use as a paint smock That way their clothes won’t get ruined and when you are done you just have to throw away the paper and put the pumpkins out to dry and wash their faces and hands a little maybe. It’s all about making the mess easy to handle, not about eliminating the mess. This is a reminder to me too though cause the thought of giving me 3 year old any kind of paint makes me so anxious!
Jean Van't Hul
October 30, 2011 at 1:27 pmThanks, Jael! Another idea is to take the messy projects outside if you’re too worried about it.
Helen
November 3, 2011 at 4:08 pmThanks for fixing it! I really like being able to save the full posts in my rss reader.
home painting in chennai
November 22, 2011 at 11:02 amcute pumpkins
good color shattered!.
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