Hand-Print Pumpkins Craft

I LOVE LOVE LOVE doing arts and crafts projects with my children, as well as in my therapy sessions. There are so many language learning opportunities when doing a craft project with a child or group of children: following directions, basic concepts and vocabulary development, etc. In the theme of fall and Halloween, this week we made hand-print pumpkins!

You Will Need

• Washable children’s paint (orange, green and black or brown)
• Paintbrushes
• Construction paper
• Baby wipes, paper towels, or hand towel (to clean off little hands quickly!)

How To Do It

1. Have your child pick out a piece of paper. I would give them a choice of two or three colors and and ask “What color paper would you like?” (Working on receptive language, expressive language,  and color ID)
2. The first step will be painting your child’s palm only (or having your child paint their own palm) with orange paint. As you do this, tell your child what you are doing. Talk about how the paint feels on the skin.  (for example: “We are going to paint your hand with orange paint with the paintbrush! Here, let me have your hand. Great job! Keep your hand open for me. How does the paint feel? Is it cold or hot?”)
3. After the palm is painted, take your child’s hand and place it on the paper and lightly press down, creating a print of your child’s palm. This will be the pumpkin! Be sure to talk about each step as you do it. (i.e. “Now I am going to put your hand on the paper! Wow look at that! We just made a pumpkin with your hand! Let’s make another one!”)
4. Repeat step three as many times as you would like to make several pumpkins. We did three for each child.
5. Allow the pumpkins to dry. It took ours about 10 minutes.
6. When the pumpkins are dry, it is time to paint some faces! This is a great time to work on body part vocabulary and shapes as you and your child paint faces on your pumpkins. (i.e. eyes, nose, mouth, circles, triangles, crescent, squares). We also painted on stems. Be creative…you can also paint a scarecrow or vines, whatever you want! 🙂 I painted vines on Ev’s.

Other ideas for your hand-print pumpkins

• Make a pumpkin family! Have each member of the family make a pumpkin on one sheet of paper. You can frame it and hang it as a fall decoration!
• Make Halloween Party invites or Halloween cards to send to the grandparents!

Tips on Making this a Language Rich Activity

• Make sure to talk to your child about each step. First, next, then, last.
• Talk about how the paint feels. Is it cold? Wet? Sticky?
• Talk about pumpkins. Their color, shape, feel. Where do they grow? What do we do with them?
• Talk about how paint goes from wet to dry. Why does this happen?
• Check out my post HERE for more tips on using

Please let me know if you try this at home. I would love to hear how they turned out! Remember to talk about each step of your project with your child and give him/her opportunities to answer questions about what he/she is doing. After you are done, can your child tell you the steps to how to make the pumpkins?

Cheers!