Pumpkins and Puddles

When I first saw these Pumpkin Drip Art Paintings by The Imagination Tree, I knew I had to try them.  Granted, it took me two years, but we finally gave it a shot!!

Monkey had never tried any sort of drip art before, but when the instructions are as simple as "squeeze the paint onto the pumpkin and see what happens", you really can't go wrong.

He had a blast and thought his puddles were just amazing too!  Clearly, he's having fun!

We had two pumpkins to paint, so he was a bit conservative with the first one, but by the time he got to the second one, his goal was to finish all of the paint we had left.  And the puddles got bigger and bigger and bigger!!

The pumpkins took a day to dry and I had to move them around a few times to get the bottoms to dry completely, but check out the finished product!  Interestingly, the glitter paint didn't look glittery until it was dried, so we had quite a surprise when we checked on them the next morning.

I definitely see more drip art in our future!

Easy Jack-O-Lantern for Preschoolers

Making a Jack-O-Lantern, though always part of Halloween fun, has never really struck me as a great activity for preschoolers.  The pulp provides endless sensory excitement, but tends to be hard to remove with little hands and the cutting of the face is obviously better left to the grown-ups, so how can we get the kiddos more involved??  Here are some tips that I found very useful for Monkey this year.

First, be sure to cut the top wide enough for your little one to reach all the way down inside easily.  I used a sturdy metal ice cream scooper to scrape all of the pulp and seeds from the sides of the pumpkin first, then it was Monkey's turn to dive in and pull it all out.  Loosening everything up first let him focus on the squishy, icky awesomeness that IS pumpkin pulp!

After he'd pulled everything out and we set the seeds aside for roasting, I handed him a Sharpie and had him draw a face.  He started with teeny dots for eyes, so I reminded him that I would need a large shape to cut out and he tried again.

Once the face was complete, I did the cutting and he was thrilled to see his drawing come to life.  He couldn't wait to see what his Jack-O-Lantern looked like in the dark, so we found a dark room and tested it out.

Boo!

Happy carving!!