Pumpkin carving is usually seen as an activity for older children but with the right supervision and the right tools, pumpkin carving can be a great Halloween activity for toddlers too.
There are two ways to get toddlers involved with pumpkin carving, one way is to carve a pumpkin normally but turn it into a sensory experience for your toddler. The other is to decorate your pumpkin with arts and crafts rather than carving, a bonus with this option is that the pumpkin remains in tact so it can be used to make soup once Halloween is over – no food waste!
Carving Pumpkins with Toddlers
Halloween is an exciting time for young and old! Here at Parenting Hacks Please, we are all about getting children involved with everyday activities, and at Halloween, pumpkin carving is an everyday activity.
No matter what age your toddler is, you can get them involved in the following ways:
- When emptying out the inside of your pumpkin, you can turn it into a sensory experience for your toddler. Let them see when you take the lid off the pumpkin for the first time. Let your little one see inside the pumpkin and touch the seeds and pulp. The pulp will be an unfamiliar texture for them, they may love it or hate it!
- Once you have emptied most of the pulp and seeds, you can leave the last few seeds for your toddler to reach in and pick out themselves. If you have an especially big pumpkin, your toddler may have to put their whole arm in to reach the bottom – a unique Halloween experience if they have never done it before.
- If you are artistic, you can let your toddler pick the design for your pumpkin, for example if your toddler loves monster trucks, you can find a template for monster trucks.
- Once you start carving, ask your toddler to push out the pieces of pumpkin that are not needed. Your toddler can then use the pieces of pumpkin that you are not using to work on their chopping skills. Toddler knife sets are great for building on motor skills and teaching little ones how to use knives in the kitchen. There are various toddler knife kits available, you can find an example of a toddler knife set here.
Decorating Pumpkins
The other way to make pumpkin carving into a halloween toddler activity is to have your toddler decorate a pumpkin instead of carving one. They can use paint, glue, glitter, stickers, etc, whatever arts and crafts supplies you have to hand. Once their pumpkin has dried (assuming they’ve used paint or glue), you can draw a typical pumpkin face over their pumpkin with a black permanent marker or cut eyes and a mouth out of plain paper and stick it on to their pumpkin.
This option is very economical because once Halloween is over, you can chop up the decorated pumpkin and make it into pumpkin soup!
Get creative and have a spooktacular Halloween!
