Paper Plate Pumpkins

Painted Paper Plate Pumpkins.  Try saying that five times fast!  No really do it!  Ok, now onto the real fun.  We enjoyed our pumpkin rice treats so much, we decided to make some more pumpkins that would actually keep around the house until Halloween.  All we needed was something round and orange, which quickly translated to paper plates and orange paint.

Supplies:

• Plain Paper Plate
• Orange Paint
• Paint Brush or Fingers!
• Black Construction Paper
• Brown Construction Paper
• Green Pipe Cleaner

The kids love when I drag out this old blue tablecloth.  It's one of those cheese vinyl picnic table cloths.  We only use it for painting so when they see me lay it out on the table they always get excited!  I gave them the option of finger painting or using a brush.  My oldest wanted to finger paint, and the youngest wanted to use a brush.  Well at least she started off using a brush anyway!  

After painting the plate orange (my oldest had to do both sides because pumpkins are orange all the way around!), we let them dry for a little bit...ie about 2 seconds because they just couldn't wait to make them into jack-o-lanterns!

We used black construction paper to make the eyes, nose, and mouth.  It's a good opportunity to talk about shapes.  The eyes and nose are triangles.  We started with something close to a crescent or half circle shape for the mouth and cut out squares or triangles to finish it.

The stem is a rectangle shape cut from brown construction paper.  And we finished them off with a leaf made out of a green pipe cleaner.  

Carefully poke the pipe cleaner through the plate near the stem to attach it to the pumpkin.  You could also use a hole punch to make this easier.  To make the curly vine shape, wrap the pipe cleaner around a pencil or your finger a few times and gently slide it off.

And voila, you have a super fun and easy pumpkin or jack-o-lantern to decorate with for Halloween!