Handprint Paper Plate Pumpkins

I must warn you now…this post is riddled with pictures! I guess I have a tendency to go overboard when little man is doing a project. It’s just so adorable I can’t help myself!

This is the perfect harvest project for little ones. It’s so simple, but has several different components to keep the attention of the little guys. I did this with my 2.5 year old and he did great, though it’s also fun for older kids.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Orange & Green Paint {washable is preferred}
Paint Brushes
Paper Plate
Brown or Black Card-stock {or construction paper}
White Paper
Glue Stick

Start out by painting your child’s palms green and making {one of each} hand prints on the white paper.

Little man LOVED this part…I think he would have made hand prints all night if I would have let him!

While your hand prints are drying, paint the back of your paper plate orange.

Little man enjoyed this part, but after a while he got a little frustrated with trying to cover all of the white.

At this point, he asked me to finish the painting. I don’t like to do his projects for him, but I understand when he’s getting frustrated, so I guided his hands to help him finish the painting.

Our pumpkin dried pretty quickly, so we immediately got to the gluing.

While he was painting, I cut out his dried hand prints, a pumpkin stump, and eyes a nose & a mouth.

Little man is obsessed {to say the least} with glue sticks, so I let him go at it for this project. He glued everything onto the pumpkin and thoroughly enjoyed it!

PUMPKIN FACE!!! If you’d like to make your pumpkin plate into a mask, simply cut out holes for eyes and attach a popsicle stick to the bottom as a handle.

Can you tell he thinks I take too many pictures? The top one in this post was the best photo I could get…by the time I took the picture above, he was over it! I love the flared nostrils…*haha*!

I was thinking for older kids it might be really fun to provide different pairs of eyes, noses, and mouths so they could pick and choose how crazy they want their pumpkin to look. It would even be cute to have googly eyes or foam shapes!