No-Carve Pumpkin Decorating Ideas
True confession time. I don’t like carving pumpkins. I don’t.
I’ve done the basic triangle eyes and pumpkin teeth carve, but after a few decades, that gets old.
I tried the “buy a complicated pattern and battery operated carver” thing and they either never work.
Or if we have a warm stretch, they rot within a few days.
Give me simplicity, but not a boring pumpkin decoration. I don’t have time, but the kids and I want to have fun and we want some festive holiday decorations.
There is still plenty of time to order your pumpkin decorating items, buy pumpkins, decorate the pumpkins and enjoy them until the 31st.
And, as an added benefit, some of our disabled kiddos don’t have the strength, skills or sensory tolerance to carve a pumpkin.
But some of these are really simple and can be done as a fine motor activity.
Pumpkin Decorating Kits
An easy way to do this is to just order a pumpkin decorating kit online.
You can find stickers, paint, googly eyes…..you name it.
Easy No Carve Pumpkin Ideas
- Use Chalk Paint. Get yourself some chalk paint and paint the whole pumpkin. Then, use chalk to write whatever you wish! It’s the black pumpkin shown in the collage.
- Get Face Stickers. Face Stickers for pumpkins are everywhere. Face stickers for pumpkins are really cute and fun. And, what a great way to work with our autistic students and others who struggle to understand facial expressions. Surround the activity with language and conversation. The kids won’t even realize that they are learning while they have fun.
- Foam Stickers– You can find foam stickers with just about anything on them. And, it you don’t want to ditch your pumpkin by Election Day, look for Thanksgiving themed pumpkin stickers.
- Melted Crayons– Crayola makes specific kits for this, but I recommend using the old, broken crayons that we all have in our homes. Look at Crayola.com for tutorials.
- Buy reusable decorations that stick in the pumpkin. Shown are the witch frog and spider that I have in my pumpkins. I also have the rat. The best part is that they come with metal pins on the back side of them, so you just push them into the pumpkin like a thumbtack. And, I can use them again and again.
- Stick in Beads-Think of the old school Lite Brite type beads. Or, glue beads on to your pumpkin in a sparkly design. Another great fine motor activity, too.
- Painting! Just paint it and let the pumpkin be your canvas. From the teal pumpkin project kit, to show that you have something for every kid, to mustache stickers to add to painted pumpkins, combine paints and stickers for some really fun pumpkins. Crayola even sells special paint for this.
- Drilling-The latest trend in decorating pumpkins is drilling. Yes, a drilled pumpkin! Ok, yeah, it’s kind of like carving, but it looks much easier to do. You can find a complete tutorial for this on One Little Project.
Whatever you choose, I’m sure it will be fun! Have fun decorating your pumpkins this season. Now that I don’t have all the clean up, I know we’ll be having a lot more fun.
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