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By Spramani Elaun
Nature of Art®
Pumpkin Painting for Young Kids, safe non toxic project
Having your little one personalize a beautiful natural pumpkin is a great fall or Halloween season experience.
Listed below are supplies and simple instructions easy to follow.
The idea is to be natural and your child be safe while painting their very own pumpkin.
Allow time to play and paint with colors.
Pumpkin will have a nice personal touch by your child when dry.
Pumpkin painting prep:
Pick pumpkins that have no blemishes to keep from rotting later.
Clean pumpkin gently with soap and water or wipe off with baby wipes (chlorine free is better for kids health).
Let pumpkin air-dry or wipe down with a dry cloth.
Prep Space
Prepare a nice work space to get messy.
Easier if pumpkin is at eye level for child to paint.
Use drop cloth if painting on the ground.
Recycle junk mail or news print as a work space to catch dripping paint.
Remember you will also get messy so dress for it!
Supplies:
Clothes that can get messy or artist smock.
Paint brushes- small for little pumpkins or large for bigger pumpkins. Sponges and fingers can also for painting pumpkin.
Water jar- helps clean brushes and washes out paint between colors.
A napkin or cloth rag helps wipe hands, brushes or spills.
Paints
I suggest fall style color paints: green, white, red, orange, yellow, brown, purple
* Note – Black is a very strong color pigment, keep this color to a small portion because it will take over all the other colors and create a gray mass. I recommend you don’t put out black for very young artist. Pumpkin will look great even without black.
Paints – many different paints can work for pumpkin painting.Remember this is a seasonal project and will only last the life of the pumpkin. So safe paints are perfect for this project! Young children should not use adult grade paints.
Palette or paper plate- good to squeeze paints on. Start out simple with a couple of colors, maybe even three colors.
Squeeze out about a quarter sizes of paints to start with.
Demonstrate simple strokes first in front of child so they can get a good idea how to paint pumpkin. Even show them how to wash brushes in water if they are old enough to do this. I would not worry much about this with the younger kids. Just simply let them have fun painting with no instructions on what to paint on pumpkin.
Recommended safe paints:
Non-Toxic, water-based, natural mineral paints, milk paints, acrylic kids paint, tempera paints, washable paints will work well on pumpkins.
3 grown-ups help ideas
1. You can paint cute eyes over your child’s work if you want. Use black and white at the end or when it’s completely dry.
2. Glue googly eyes on when paint is dry.
3, Use recycled scraps to make fun facial features or you can attach veggies to make face features.
Painting ideas for older kids:
Purple – Dracula, monsters, bats, Green – witches, goblins, aliens, White – ghosts, puppies, Black – spiders, bats, Silver – robots, aliens, Brown – bears, owls, fox
