Easy No Carve Pumpkin Decorating Ideas for Kids

With Halloween right around the corner as I write this, you might be looking for some ways to decorate pumpkins for kids without carving. Whether you’re doing this as a classroom or at home, there are a lot of fun ways to decorate pumpkins that don’t require sharp instruments.

Painting: A couple of years ago my daughter decided she wanted to paint a scene on our pumpkin instead of carving. She’s a teen and legitimately an artist, so it turned out beautiful, but kids of any age and artistic skill level can paint a pumpkin (and we definitely have had some more chaotic versions over the years). If you’re looking for some specific ideas on painting pumpkins, this post from Parents has a view good ideas. I love the emojis and the mini pumpkins painted as doughnuts, shown above.

Add Accessories: Easy Peasy and Fun has a great collection of (mostly) simple painted pumpkins that are embellished in different ways to make them a little more fun. I love this little bat, which only requires painting the pumpkin black and adding embellishments made with construction paper.

Drawing: If you don’t want to get out the paint, using markers (or paint pens, or oil pastels) to draw on a pumpkin can also be a lot of fun. This is especially effective on a light-colored pumpkin. (The photo above is from Casolia, by the way.)

Stickers: It’s almost universal that kids love sticking stickers to things, so why not give them a pumpkin and whatever stickers you have lying around (seasonally appropriate ones or eyes would be great, but not essential) and let them go to town.

Googly eyes: Speaking of eyes, if you’ve got a supply of peel and stick googly eyes (or the patience to use glue), adding eyes to a pumpkin is a fun and easy way to make a pumpkin spooky with very little work. This version comes from She Wears Many Hats.

You can also combine any of these ideas, so start with painting, then add stickers and/or eyes and just keep building from there. Maybe throw in some feathers and your pumpkin will be all set for Thanksgiving, too.

How do you like to decorate pumpkins with kids? I’d love to hear your ideas!

Several countries have a day set aside to honor and recognize their inventors, but Nov. 9 is a special one that’s known as Tag der Erfinder in German. It’s celebrated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and it falls on Nov. 9 because that’s the birthday of Hedy Lamarr.

Hedy Lamarr is widely known as an actress but there’s a lot more to her story. You can get a little of it geared to little kids in the Little People, Big Dreams book Hedy Lamarr (32 pages, hardcover, published 2023 by Frances Lincoln Childrens Books, suggested retail price $15.99).

The book explores her birth in Austria and how she spent time when she was young coming up with inventions. She became an actress, married an arms dealer, made her escape to America and became an actress again.

But she also helped develop a frequency-hopping signal device for airplanes that was used by the Americans and their allies during World War II. That technology became the basis for wireless technology such as wifi and GPS.

While Inventor’s Day is a great time to learn about Hedy Lamarr, you can take this opportunity to check out books and do little studies on lots of different inventors. If there’s an inventor or an invention your child is particularly interested in, that’s a great place to start. It’s fun to think about all the things we use every day that didn’t always exist; someone had to invent them!

For a start here at Craft Gossip you can learn more about Garrett Morgan, who invented traffic lights; Maria Oroso, who developed a clay oven that could cook food without electricity; and more female inventors and scientists.

And for more general inventors’ fun, check out this inventors word search from Fun Findery (and another from Let’s Do Puzzles) or take a quiz on inventors and their inventions from Flanders Family Home Life.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply