Pumpkin Decorating for Toddlers

If you’d rather not scoop out the “guts” of a pumpkin and get out the knife to try to carve out a jack-o-lantern face, I have a great option for you that is easy and toddler-friendly.

You can use this method on real pumpkins, or buy a craft pumpkin at a craft store. Craft pumpkin bonuses are that you can keep them, and they don’t deteriorate over time in the hot weather.

The only supplies you actually need, besides the pumpkins, are painters’ tape and acrylic paint. Beyond that, you can use paintbrushes or foam brushes, stick-on spider webs and spiders, jewels or anything you can imagine. Take a stroll through a craft store, and you will probably get lots of inspiration.

The idea, of course, is that any design you make with the painters’ tape will be masked off, and your kid can go crazy painting everything else. Toddlers love to use their fingers to paint, so let them. If you’re making intricate patterns, letters or numbers with the painters’ tape, you may need an Xacto knife to cut the shape once you’ve put the tape on the pumpkin.

Here’s a pumpkin that says, “BOO” and will have stripes when we finish painting and pull off the tape.

On our other pumpkins, we made an initial “C” and an “8” for KTUL Channel 8 and dotted different colors over it; we masked off a traditional jack-o-lantern face and spread paint using a foam brush; and we painted a bat on a real pumpkin and added stick-on embellishments.

It’s super easy and fun. Even a toddler could do it.