Carving Pumpkins

Carving pumpkins for Halloween can be a fun art project. Once you have picked out your pumpkin, you will want to determine how large the carving space is. This all depends on how large your pumpkin is. Once that has been determined, then your child can draw a carving design on paper.

The age of your child will determine how elaborate the design will be. The most important part of the design is figuring out which parts of the pumpkin will be cut out and removed. My high school students have a hard time with that concept sometimes. They get so caught up in the details and end up designing something that will cave in or fall out.

Once your child has a design, they can transfer the design to the pumpkin by taping the design to the pumpkin and carving through the paper and pumpkin at the same time. Or they can draw the design again using graphite or marker. Some of my students used ball point pen for their pumpkin.

Another option is to purchase a pumpkin carving kit that has a little roller tool, called a pounce wheel. This tool is used to draw along the lines of your sketch to transfer small punctures into the skin of the pumpkin. You might use the pounce wheel for the outer section of the drawing and then use marker for the inside areas that have more detail.

Once you have the drawing on the pumpkin, you can begin to carve. Some of you may not want to carve pieces out of the pumpkin. You may want to score and remove the dark orange part of the pumpkin to create a lighter peach colored creation like the owl in the photograph.

There are other options. You can draw a design on the pumpkin with markers. Or you can paint your pumpkin and add items to the pumpkin such as the eyes for the cookie monster pumpkin below.

Creating with pumpkins can be a fun project. Plus, you may want to save the seeds to roast later on. I hope you have a great time creating your pumpkin. Happy Halloween!!!!