Use up your Pumpkin Seeds with these fun crafts for preschoolers!
With so much pumpkin carving going on around this time of year, it’s good to know what you can do with all those leftover pumpkin seeds (unless you’re planning on growing a whole lot!)
Pumpkin seed crafts and activities are a great way to make good use of any scooped out pumpkin seeds that you don’t know what to do with. The little seeds are great for developing fine motor skills in little hands.
As well as some fun crafts, you can also have a lot of sensory fun with pumpkin seeds. If you’re little one is unsure of going all in to the very messy insides of a pumpkin, then I’ve got some tips on how to make it a little less messy and still have lots of fun!
Natural Pumpkin Seed Crafts
I don’t know about you but I just love the shiny smooth texture of a pumpkin seed! You can paint the seeds if you like, but I think the colour is so beautiful just as it is.
For these pumpkin seed crafts, all you will need to some dry pumpkin seeds and the free printable templates below. So let’s just quickly cover how best to get the pumpkin seeds ready for crafting!
How best to scoop out the pumpkin seeds
This is a messy process, and there’s no easy way around it. However if you scoop the contents of your pumpkin out into a bowl and fill with water, the seeds will float to the surface and can be scooped out with your hands fairly easily. A colander also helps with this process. Once you have as many as you can scoop out, it’s time to dry them to get rid of any bits of pumpkin you missed.
How to dry pumpkin seeds
The best way I found for drying out pumpkin seeds quickly, was to lay them out on kitchen towel to absorb initial moisture and then use a fan heater or a hairdryer to blast them dry!
You can also lay them out on a baking tray and pop them in the oven on the lowest temperature. This does however take some time and also causes the pumpkin seeds to loose a bit of their beautiful shine.
Hedgehog, Pumpkin and Tree Crafts
These crafts are all based on the free printable below which you can use as a guide. Depending on the age of your child, you may wish to approach these pumpkin seed crafts slightly differently. But firstly let’s download the printables:
Pumpkin Seed Craft Templates
How to adapt the activity to your little one
Pumpkin seed crafts for younger toddlers
For younger children you will need to make it really easy to stick down the pumpkin seeds, you can do this several ways:
- Cover the image in double sided sticky tape
- Use playdough as a base for pressing the pumpkin seeds into
- Cut out the outline and place some sticky contact paper behind to make the part you want to use sticky
- Have a thick layer of PVA glue to set the pumpkin seeds on (this will take some time to dry and the glue will make it slippery so keep that in mind)
For quite young children the activity can simply be sticking the pumpkin seeds on to the sticky surface with lots of help and encouragement like so:
Pumpkin seed crafts and activities for Preschoolers
For sightly older children you may wish to provide some subtle challenges in the craft to work on fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. You can do this by:
- Have your child place pumpkin seeds along the outline of the pictures – you can choose to glue these down or just have fun arranging them carefully along the edge
- Encourage your child to fill the picture with pumpkin seeds in rows or patterns (perhaps show them how first)
- Use sticky fixer foam pads on the back of the pumpkin seeds to stick them on (you may need to peel these for them but it will create a great raised art picture)
Let your child get creative and after using the printable templates have a go at making their own pictures – smiley faces are a great option for little ones!Â
Sensory Play Activities for Leftovers!
You might find yourself left with yet more pumpkin seeds even after all the crafting!
Or you might find your child is just not interested in crafting – and that’s okay!
So here is an alternative sensory activity that you can do with your leftover pumpkin seeds:
This is just a bowl of water with pumpkin seeds floating in it! It’s a fun texture to explore and you can include a spoon for mixing or jugs for pouring if you want to – but you may find that it’s fun just to plunge hands in 🙂
Have fun with these Pumpkin seed crafts
These crafts are fun for both toddlers and preschoolers (always supervise with small parts) and remember, if they’re not into it, that’s completely fine – either try again another time or turn it into a different activity!
Happy Pumpkin Carving and Pumpkin Seed Crafting!
Louisa | Mum’s Creative Cupboard x
