Halloween activities for kids : Make a simple pumpkin puzzle

While Big S, a preschooler was the one who enjoyed this activity, this pumpkin puzzle could be a perfect Halloween activity for toddlers. This season, we have done numerous Halloween crafts, pumpkin decorations and plenty of Halloween Activities. So to change things a little bit, not a lot we decided to do a learning game with pumpkins. As you might have seen we are on a math kick lately, here we have a geometric shapes pumpkin puzzle.

Every visit to the farmers market or the grocery stores turn into a pumpkin purchase trip. To keep them busy and behaved in the shopping cart I give into the “I-just-want-to-hold-them” fiesta and it did not go as I had planned. So we have  a few more pumpkins..

Since we have all these extra pumpkins sitting and drying away, I thought, it would  be fun to convert them to learning material. When Big S was away at school, I carved out shapes and scooped out the flesh and was ready to surprise her with a “Puzzle on a Pumpkin” Halloween activity.

[box title=”Things we used” color=”#b33838″]

• Pumpkins
• Markers ( draw shapes)
• Toothpick

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Draw the desired shapes on the pumpkin and cut/curve out the shapes and scoop out the flesh and seeds.

On that note, if you want to be more hands on, you could also have your older child draw shapes on the pumpkins. I’m sure kids would jump on any opportunity to write on any surface other than plain old white paper. Letting the kids draw/write on pumpkin is a sure way to get them interested in writing be it letters, numbers of even doodling.

Attach a toothpick to the shapes and that’s your puzzle piece.

 You are all set with a fun Halloween activity now. Get ready to play Pumpkin puzzle ! This could be a very engaging Halloween activity for toddlers because the pieces are large enough for them to handle and easy enough that they don’t get frustrated pretty quick. [highlight bg=”#DDFF99″ color=”#000000″]If playing with pre schoolers, you could easily adapt the activity and make it more challenging with more pieces and complex shapes.[/highlight]

 Big S loved every second of it and now cant wait to go shopping to buy more pumpkins to create more puzzles.

What did I do now?

[box title=”Learning de jour” color=”#b33838″]

• Shapes
• Sorting shapes
• Fine motor practice with toothpicks

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UPDATE: Just saw that The Chocolate Muffin Tree did this for last Halloween. It is funny how ideas overlap so often 🙂

For more Halloween activities visit our category page

Happy Halloween

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