Pumpkin ideas

[WImom]

What to do with a large pumpkin besides making it a jack o lantern and taking out the guts? (We are doing that but was thinking of something they could do with it before that).
I had a hammer golf tees into a pumpkin idea BUT I can't find my golf tees.

Tomorrow we are painting small pumpkins so painting is probably out.

Any other easy ideas? Ages 2-5y.

[nothingwithoutjoy]

Our favorite way to decorate pumpkins is to hammer stuff onto it. (See here.)

[daycarediva]

We did several large pumpkins donated by families;

hammered
drilled holes and used it as a potato head
painted
rolled them in a race
head of our scarecrow
one we split in half and filled both sides with dirt (leaving the guts in) so that the seeds will sprout.

Hope that helps!

[Leanna]

-Weigh it
-Measure it
-Guess how many grooves are in it (then count)
-Scoop seeds and bake
-Guess will it floator sink? Then test it!
-How big around do you think it is? Have each child cut a piece of yarn as big as they think the pumpkin is and then see who was closest.

[KDC]

We decorated pumpkins with random art supplies to be like our favorite literary character for school with my kids and I tried it this year with my DCK's. They loved coming up with ideas, needed help with execution a bit. I used duct tape (to keep things on the pumpkin, kind of acted like colorform stickies), pipe cleaners, felt, construction paper, cheap tablecloths, and cotton balls. Low temp hot glue for the stubborn pieces.

This year my son did Captain Underpants and my daughter did Frogilina from the Froggy series. Last year we did PJ Funny Bunny from Dr. Seuss & Piggie from Piggie & Elephant. DCK's did the bear from Put me in the zoo (Dr. Seuss) and Spiderman. We made a list of all the things we needed each of the characters to have, assigned a creative 'team' and worked together to make it happen. During the 'construction' we did the easy things together and I sent them away before interest waned to do the more complicated assembly. Because the ideas and most of the construction was their own, they were VERY proud of their pumpkins =) The challenge was telling them the pumpkins were part of the daycare and not for them to take home.

You could hammer in pegs and make a spiderweb with black yarn around the pumpkin too, throw some plastic spiders in it.

[Brooksie]

We painted pumpkins that we picked at the pumpkin patch. I also chopped on in half for the to check out. Great sensory and science. They also have the little pumpkins that you can roll to paint pictures. I like the hammering things into it idea. Wish we weren't already done our pumpkin week.... Have to remember that for next year

[WImom]

Yeah! I found the tees so we hammered tees into it, weighed it and the kids made up faces on a piece of paper for the pumpkin. We carved some from each child's paper to make our class Jack-o-lantern.

Thanks for the ideas. I'm keeping them for next year. Tomorrow we paint their little pumpkins. Should be fun - I normally don't do the painting since I have 8 but this year I only have 4 so I splurged and bought 4 pumpkins.