Decorating Pumpkins {Toddler and Preschooler Friendly Activity}

The other day I bought two little white pumpkins just on a whim. I knew I wanted Evie to get to decorate them some how, but had no clue as to what way. I have a bin full of craft supplies, and some offs and ends floating around the house. Evie recently pulled out two little containers of glitter herself just because she thought they looked pretty. That settled what was going to happen to the pumpkins right then and there.

Our pumpkins were going to get a coating of pixie dust as my preschooler calls it.

Yesterday morning I got everything together that we needed. Glue (all I had was glitter glue), and the two containers of sparkles Evie has been eyeing up for a few days. I also laid out a huge piece of packing paper that recently was inside a box that arrived at our home, and a smaller piece of scrap paper I folded in half to collect the sparkles as needed. Two lines of defence against my preschooler getting glitter everywhere! 

I let my preschooler try to put the glue on herself, but I was quickly promoted to being the one to deal with the glue as she promptly told me it was “too hard for my little hands”. At least she is honest. She still had a vision for what she wanted done to the pumpkin. I was old polka dots, and where to put the glue, and if the circle was the be big or little. It amazed me to see how much she seemed to already have pictured in her mind. 

After putting some glue polka dots on the pumpkin my preschooler had at it with glitter. Thankfully these ones had little holes for it to come out, it didn’t all just come out at once. This made things much more manageable. She then helped with tipping the pumpkin over and tapping off the excess sparkles onto the folded paper. I then put the sparkles back into the container to be used again. On we went decorating her two different pumpkins. One with lots of dots, the other with some stripes. To finish them off, she decided that the stems of the pumpkins needed to be sparkly too. So those got a coat of glue, and lots of glitter shaken out onto them. 

I was thoroughly impressed with her abilities to do this project. It was a great, simple fall activity for her. I think preschool has definitely played a key role too, because when I was promoted to glue duty I was quickly told “Don’t eat the glue mama, its just for sticking!”. I was not expecting that little comment form her. It had me laughing so much. If you are wanting to do this with a toddler, instead of using liquid glue you could try dabs from a glue stick (it will dry faster) or I know you can buy double sided sticky dots in different sizes from craft stores. This allows little hands to also help place the dots onto the pumpkin where ever they want them. Do one colour of glitter at a time if your child is wanting multiple colours. Hand over hand works great as well to help control the amount of glitter being used. 

Amazingly enough our home does not look like a glitter explosion. This is the perfect decorating pumpkin activity for toddlers and preschoolers, no need to worry about sharp objects. Just let them get creative.