Your toddler may be excited about going trick-or-treating with you for the first time, or maybe they want to help when it comes to carving the Halloween pumpkin.
While a toddler wouldn’t carve a pumpkin from scratch, there are loads of ways they can get stuck in when it comes to decorating for Halloween – all in a safe and age-appropriate way.
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How Do You Involve A Toddler In Pumpkin Carving?
You can involve your toddler in pumpkin carving by getting them to help with the design. Ask them to scribble their plan on a piece of paper or whiteboard first if you like. See here for some spooky ideas.
Or you can get them to draw with a black biro or felt tip straight onto the pumpkin. Remember, it doesn’t need to be perfect. Wonky eyes and mouth can look even spookier! Your toddler doesn’t need to stick to faces either. Maybe try a cat, or castle, or bat.
If they want to get involved with hollowing out the pumpkin, get an adult or older sibling to cut the top off the pumpkin. Then you could give your toddler a large spoon to help scoop out the pumpkin flesh and seeds into a bowl. Who knows, they might actually be more willing to try pumpkin soup or pie afterwards if they’ve helped with this bit!
How Can Toddlers Help Make A Pumpkin’s Face?
Again, as an adult, you could carve the design (like the eyes and mouth), but don’t actually push the pieces out. Let your toddler help with this. You could give them a play knife or piece of their own cutlery to try and pop the pieces out the other side. Playdough tools also work well for this.
Battery-operated tealights are great and much safer for toddlers when adding light to pumpkins.
What Do Children Learn From Pumpkin Carving?
Designing the pumpkin’s ‘face’ is great for general drawing and fine motor skills. It can be very different drawing on a 3D pumpkin compared to drawing on a flat piece of paper!
If your toddler gets a go at scooping out the pumpkin or pushing out the pieces for eyes and mouth, they’ll be practising both their gross and fine motor skills as they manipulate the spoon and tools.
Pumpkins are also a treat for the senses. They’ll experience that delicious pumpkiny smell and possibly the taste if you cook the pumpkin up as well!
What Age Can You Start Carving Pumpkins?
Although 9-14 is the recommended age for actually using pumpkin carving tools, you can still involve toddlers in the drawing of the design and some of the hollowing out. You just need a large spoon, ice cream scoop or some play cutlery. Or why not let them have a go at pulling the ‘slime’ out from the middle of the pumpkin with their hands and dumping it in a bowl? Messy play opportunity right there!
Preschoolers will also love it if you carve the shapes out and let them push them through.
So there are definitely ways you can include preschoolers in hulling, scooping and ‘carving’!
What Other Halloween Decorations Can I Make With My Toddler?
You can keep Halloween decorations spooky yet simple for toddlers. Why not try paper ghost chains or pumpkins in a row?
Pebble ghosts are really easy to make with toddlers. All you need is some small pebbles and white paint. Once you’ve painted the pebble and let it dry, you can paint or stick on eyes.
Check out arts and crafts classes here on Happity – usually these groups will run Halloween specials around this time of year.
Glowing Halloween jars are also fun and effective. Firstly, cover your jar with masking tape or tissue paper. Glue on eyes and a mouth. Again, these can be made out of tissue paper. To create a glowing lamp, pop in a toddler-friendly battery-operated tealight. Finally, put the jar on your mantelpiece or windowsill.
See more in our post here on spooky toddler crafts.
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