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Easy Pumpkin Crafts for Kids

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Pumpkins are such a fun and easy shape to use for all sorts of craft projects. Even little kids can make super cute crafts with pumpkins like these.

For the littlest kids, this mess-free pumpkin painting project from Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds is a great one. The post includes a printable pumpkin shape you can use to make the project.

This paper strip pumpkin is one of the easiest for little kids to make and gives them a chance to practice their gluing skills. Get the DIY from Color the Moon.

A suncatcher is another easy one for little kids because it looks great almost no matter how you do it. Get the instructions from Fantastic Fun and Learning.

Painting with baking soda is a fun STEAM craft that makes a cool effect. You can find all the details at Inspiration Laboratories.

Using paper strips to make a pumpkin (or an apple if you make it with red paper) is a classic quick and easy craft. You can make this a Thanksgiving craft instead of a Halloween craft by adding things the kids are thankful for to the strips. This idea is from One Little Project. They’ve also got a good post about making yarn pumpkins, which also could be apples if you use red yarn, or you can just make yarn balls in any color you like (add an LED candle to make a super cute lantern).

Speaking of paper pumpkins, another fun three-dimensional paper pumpkin project is this one from Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls. Use plain orange paper, Halloween themed scrapbook paper, or let kids draw on whatever paper you use to make these fun little pumpkins.

Get out your felt and make these little jack o’lantern softies, which can be made no sew as Sunny Day Family shows them, or you can let kids practice their sewing skills on this simple shape.

Have you read?

Book Review: The Festival of Lights

As if Diwali weren’t colorful and fun enough, The Festival of Lights: A Lift-the-flap Diwali Celebration by Namita Moolani Mehra, illustrated by Darshika Varm, makes it even more fun to read about with flaps and things to lift and pull to see more information or details in the illustrations. 

The book is a story about a family getting ready for Diwali and what happens on the different days of the five-day celebration. There’s cleaning, shopping, crafting, food preparation and getting the home altar ready for the big day. 

It covers decorating the outside of the house with rangoli, diyas and lanterns, buying sweets to share with family and friends, the sights and scents of the mandir (home temple), getting dressed up in new fancy clothes, the story of Diwali and celebrations with relatives.  

Flaps (there are more than 140 in all) give you vocabulary words for different foods and definitions, as well as fun things like what’s inside the shopping basket or where the cat is hanging out. They also help illuminate the story of Diwali, which is the triumph of good over evil as Lord Ram defeated the demon Ravana to save his wife, Sita. 

This pretty and colorful book helps kids understand what Diwali is and how it is celebrated, regardless of whether they practice it at home. This would be a nice book to keep in a classroom (it’s rated for kids ages 3-7) or to have at home to teach kids about Diwali even if it’s not something you celebrate. Where I live there are a lot of people from India so we are probably exposed to Diwali more than some other regions of America, but it’s a nice holiday to know about wherever you live. 

Combine with the book Diwali and check out some fun lantern crafts and printables for kids to round out your experience. 

About the book: 24 pages, hardcover, published 2025 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail prices $22.99.

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