My kids love getting the jack-o-lanterns ready for the big night.  They love it so much that they want to start carving on October 1st.   There are often frustrated tears and wine involved during those tantrums and the kids get upset too. We all (at least the adults) know the stinky messy problem that carving that early would cause.  I decided to try to compromise this year.   My little kids are 4 and 6 and after a quick trip to a local “farm” we picked up some mini pumpkins.  The next day we began our pumpkin carving.  I was inspired by a post I saw on Living Montessori Now.  If you haven’t seen her site, you should.  She has amazing ideas for the littles in your life.  What I love most about this is that we can carve several times leading up to the holiday! I have provided affiliate links in this post for your convenience.  Please see my full disclosure here.

I cut the tops off and set them on the pans for the kids with spoons.  They had to get all of the guts out of the pumpkins first.  My bigger little guy is a perfectionist and this took him a little while to accomplish.  My little guy was ready to go and I had to help make sure he had all of the goo out.   I will say that the mini pumpkins are harder to clean and I would definitely wash the insides out with a little vinegar water next time.

Once they were clean they got to choose their face.  I did draw it on for them.  Primarily because it is hard to draw on the pumpkin, but also because they wanted specific faces.  I drew the face on and started the first nail.

I did stay close by and had to help them get the nail out and get it started most of the time.  (This was probably due to the size of the pumpkin).  They drove the nail into the pumpkin following the lines I had drawn previously.

What did we end up with… cuteness!  They are super proud.

A tip… I couldn’t get a regular tea light to fit so I cut birthday candles in half.  I melted the bottom a little to help it stand it up.  It worked perfectly, but didn’t last long.  You could also cut the back out of the pumpkin.

Remember to have fun.  The kids are focused on the process not the product.  Ours are not perfect, but they are perfectly CUTE!

To extend our learning, we talked about the pumpkin life cycle. The boys are planning their own pumpkin patch for next year!  Of course we always like to add books to our activities.  Our favorite pumpkin books are The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin and From Seed to Pumpkin .

If you have a group of mad scientists like I do, you might enjoy my Halloween eBOOk.  It is free and I can send it straight to your inbox – that means you won’t lose it (it’s hard to wrangle mad scientists). Enter your name and email below to grab your copy.