Hands-On Toddler Pumpkin Painting {Super Easy}

Inside: Help your toddlers build fine motor skills with this super easy toddler pumpkin painting activity. Simply wash the paint off and start again!

Pumpkins.

Paint.

Cotton swabs.

Easy.

Fun!

That’s exactly what this toddler pumpkin painting activity is all about.

October means pumpkins where we live, and as soon as we add them to our classroom environment the children are so excited!

We’ve done lots of pumpkin painting activities, including a color mixing activity and painting pumpkin shapes inside a plastic bag (seriously fun!).

But truly one of the easiest toddler pumpkin painting activities is painting directly on the pumpkin!

Child Directed

What I love about this activity is that it’s child directed and super easy to set up.

No pieces to cut out ahead of time.

Nothing to staple or glue.

What You Will Need

• Pumpkin
• Paint (we used a few different colors)
• Cotton swabs

I love using cotton swabs for an extra fine motor experience.

They usually are thinner than paint  brushes and children have to work a bit harder to move them around.

The Set Up

Simply place the pumpkin on a flat surface and provide shallow containers of paint and cotton swabs.

Yep, that easy!

The Activity

There isn’t much direction needed with this activity. Once the children understand how they can apply the paint to the pumpkin using the cotton swab, they know what to do.

Tip: We covered our table with white butcher paper so the children could extend their painting experience to a flat surface. As you can see in the photos, they did exactly that!

When the pumpkin is covered with paint, simply take it to the sink, rinse the paint off, and start again!

And then later you can cut the pumpkin open to explore what’s inside.