JACK-O-LANTERN ROCKS:

Materials: Materials: Stones, orange, black and green paint, waxed paper or paint pallet, brushes, jar of water, paper towels, newspaper or plastic to cover work space, art smock or old clothes to wear.

Step 1: Have your child paint the rocks orange paper and then leave them to dry on waxed paper. You may have to do a few coats to get them a nice bright orange and to paint both sides.

Step 2: Once they are dry your child can now paint jack-o-lantern faces on the rocks using black paint.

Step 3: (Optional) Add a green stem if desired.

Step 4: Decorate your garden or front steps with your colorful rocks!

NOTE: Add one more step and coat the tops of each rock with a clear gel or water-proof coating to keep the pictures nice and bright for years to come.

PAPER JACK-O-LANTERNS:

Materials: Orange paper, black markers, child safe scissors, glue stick or tape (or both), (Optional) LED tea lights.

Step 1: Cut your orange paper in half to make a long strip of paper.

Step 2: Fold your strip of paper in half lengthwise.

Step 3: Along the folded line about 2 cm/1 inch apart cut slits but be sure to not cut all the way to the other end of the paper , stop about 1.5cm/ 1/2 inch from the top.

Step 4: Open the fold and have your child draw a Jack-o-lantern face in the middle of the strip with the eyes above the fold line and then nose and mouth under the fold line. A black Sharpie works great for this.

Step 6: Glue or apply tape to one end of the strip and attach it to the other end. You can make the lanterns as fat or as skinny as you wish (if there is too much paper you can trim it to get your desired size.

Step 7: Cut a thin strip of orange paper to be the lantern handle and glue or tape to the lantern.

Step 8: (Optional) We really liked the effect of putting those battery operated tea lights in the middle of each lantern.

PUMPKIN GARLAND:

NOTE: I love having the kids create colourful garlands for our dining area window. Garlands are a simply way to add a little colour, especially since we don’t have a view of anything out that window.

Materials: Orange paper (preferably construction paper or something a little heavier), child safe scissors, pencil, a copy of my Basic Pumpkin Template 2, brown marker, hole punch, yarn, thumb tacks or bulletin board pins.

Step 1: Have your child cut out a pumpkin template and then trace it onto the orange construction paper as many times as you want...the more pumpkins the bigger the garland. To save time we folded the paper to cut a few pumpkins out at the same time (we traced on the top fold and cut through the layers).

Step 2: Have your child colour a brown stem on the pumpkins (I suppose this step is optional but we liked the little detail).

Step 3: Fold each pumpkin over and under like a fan to create a textured slightly 3D pumpkin.

Step 4: Hold punch through each stem.

Step 5: Measure out your yarn to fit your window or wall area and cut. Tie little loops at each end to fit over a thumb tack or bulletin board pin.

Step 6: Loop each pumpkin through the yarn.

Step 7: (Two people are needed for this task). Press a pin through one lopp and to the wall and then string across your window and attach the second pin.

Step 8: Step back and enjoy!

3D PAPER PUMPKINS:

Materials: Orange paper, child safe scissors, glue stick, damp cloth for sticky fingers, brown paper, green twirling ribbon (I’m not sure what this is really called...but the kind of ribbon you can buy with the wrapping paper), clear tape.

Step 1: To make the small pumpkins cut strips of paper widthwise on the orange paper and to make larger ones cut strips of paper lengthwise. You will need three strips per pumpkin.

Step 2: Loop “strip one” (of three) and apply glue stick to one end. Press together both ends to make a loop. My son still likes to count to ten like he was taught in kindergarten to make sure the glue sticks.

Step 3: Make the part of the loop that was attached with glue the bottom of the pumpkin. Make a second loop from “strip two “ but make sure it fits above the first loop and apply glue on the first loop to attach the two together. Make sure they are spaced apart, this give the illusion of a sphere.

Step 4: Make a third loop using “strip 3” and glue it to the other two diagonally to make the sphere a little fuller. Now you have a cute little orange pumpkin. If you had bigger paper you could make a larger pumpkin and you might need three strips of paper to create a fuller pumpkin. We found three strips worked well for these small pumpkins.

Step 5: Have your child cut out some brown pumpkin stems from the brown paper. Fold a little bit along the bottom of each stem so they can be glued to the top of the pumpkin (the non glued part of the loops).

Step 6: Twirl little pieces of green ribbon and then tape them to the stem at the top of the pumpkin to create little vines.

Step 7: Viola! Now you have some cute little pumpkins to adorn your window sill or decorate your thanksgiving table!

Crafts

There are so many different Pumpkin Crafts! Let your family choose from some of these or make up your own!

Pumpkins

CORK STAMP PUMPKINS:

Materials: Black paper, orange/brown/green paint, corks, fine paint brush, wax paper, art smock or old clothes to wear, newspaper or plastic to cover your work space, black marker (Optional).

Step 1: Have your children dip one end of a cork into orange paint (put a blob on the wax paper) and then stamp it on the black paper to create pumpkins of all sizes.

Step 2: With a fine tipped paint brush have your kids pint on brown stems and then using the green paint add leaves or vines.

Step 3: (Optional) If your kids want to turn this from Autumn/Thanksgiving pictures into Halloween pictures once the paint dries they can add jack-o-lantern faces to the pumpkins.

PUMPKIN STENCIL ART:

NOTE I love how pumpkins can be in different shapes other than round. It’s fun to see what shapes there are when we pick out our pumpkins for Halloween carving. This craft is a nod to those funny shaped beauties!

Materials: Construction paper Black paper, orange/green/brown paint, paint brushes, sponge brush, wax paper, paper towels, jar of water, art smock or old clothes to wear, newspaper or plastic table cloth to cover your work area.

Step 1: Have your child drawn an oddly shaped circle or oval on construction paper. Hep him/her to cut it out in the center only keeping the paper intact. This is your stencil.

Step 2: Place stencil over black paper and paint with orange paint (we used foam brushes to dab and press the paint on for a cleaner look). Carefully lift the stencil straight up and off the black paper to reveal the pumpkin!

Step 3: Decorate with brown and orange paint to create a stem and vines or leaves.

Step 4: (Optional) To make this pumpkin craft more suitable for Halloween your child could cut out a mouth and nose and eyes from coloured paper and then glue them on with a glue stick. OR your child could paint on the face.

CRAYON RESIST PUMPKINS:

Materials: Watercolour paper (or thicker paper), pencil watercolour palette of paints and brushes, a jar of water, yellow crayon, a copy of my Basic Pumpkin Template 1 for a bigger pumpkin or a copy of Basic Pumpkin Template 2 for two smaller ones, child safe scissors.

Step 1: Have your child cut out the template he/she wants to use and then trace around the template on the watercolour paper using a pencil.

Step 2: Now your child can cut out the pumpkin from the watercolour paper.

Step 3: Have your child draw a Jack-0-lantern face on the cut out pumpkin using yellow crayon.

Step 4: Using orange water colour paint brush the paint over the pumpkin face. The wax in the crayon will resist the paint and magically shine through. Well, at least that’s the theory. Sometimes it works for us and sometimes it doesn't. I think my boys didn’t use enough crayon this time around. We applied a second wash of watercolour to see it that would help but it didn’t improve them much

Step 5: (Optional) If your crayon is faint you could have your child trace around it with black marker or a fine tipped pen like we did.