Don’t Just Pin it – Do it! Jack-O-Lantern Art

Recently in my mom group we were talking about how we are more likely to pin, than to DO the activities with our kids.

I admitted that this was a tendency of mine too but that I had recently committed to make a habit to plan on DOING at least one activity from my Pinterest boards a day… which may mean that I need to pick one the night before to make sure I have what I need.

The activity I’m going to share today isn’t one that I had on my Pinterest Board “October Activities” but it will be added today because it was always one of my favorite activities in the classroom and I had fun doing this activity with Sean Patrick.

I read this book so I could show the kids a jack-o-lantern and we could talk about the colors, shapes, and function of a jack-o-lantern 

(If you do not participate in halloween you can still make this craft asa Fall pumpkin).

First, I pulled an orange sheet of construction paper, a brown sheet of construction paper, a black sheet of construction paper, a yellow sheet of construction paper, a white crayon, and a glue stick…. these materials can vary (if you don’t have one of those colors then COLOR a white sheet of computer paper (that is what I did for the stem of the pumpkin).

Next, I drew a pumpkin shape with my white crayon onto the black construction sheet of paper.  I drew triangle eyes, a nose, and a mouth that you can fill in with yellow construction paper or leave blank. Great time to talk about shapes 🙂

Then,  together the kids and I tore the orange sheet into lots of pieces, and we used the glue stick to cover the inside of the shape on everything that we wanted to be orange.

And, we covered the pumpkin (or jack-o-lantern when you glue around the facial features).

Finally, we filled in the stem with brown, the facial features with yellow, and hung it up on our playroom blinds with a clothespin to take pride in our Jack-o-lantern!  (If I did it again I would start with the yellow facial features then do the orange).

We had fun, we accomplished something together, and they “worked out” their little fingers which is always a great way to prime them for writing.

This craftivity would be best for a four and up child in my personal opinion, but we didn’t finish this in one sitting and mommy helped A LOT!

After sharing one of these pics on my Instagram, a mommy teacher friend of mine took this approach….

And I LOVE LOVE LOVE that she used what she had, she made an activity geared toward her girl’s interests, and she inspired me to do this spin on the activity too! Thanks Allie!