Pumpkin Color Mixing Activity

What do you love about pumpkins?

Pumpkin pie, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin spice lattes? What pumpkin treat is your favorite? I am going to have to hands-down say pumpkin pie is my fave. I also love pumpkins for another reason (besides the delicious food it provides). I love pumpkins because they are the non-scary component of Halloween that I can embrace. 

Seeing as how my kids are still afraid of the dark, I really don’t want to expose them to the spooky parts of Halloween just yet. But Halloween is pretty much all about scary, isn’t it? It has taken some effort to redirect their attention to the other part of the holiday (dressing up in fun costumes, pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns, and of course candy!). I’ve been laser beamed on pumpkin activities lately to have fun and not get my kids creeped out. I’ve even thought about maybe getting them some customized pumpkin shirts from shops like Mato & Hash or have a local look around some clothing stores, so I can get them something based on Halloween but funny-spooky so they don’t feel scared but can still take part in the holiday.

It has taken some effort to redirect their attention to the other part of the holiday (dressing up in fun costumes, pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns, and of course candy!). I’ve been laser beam focused on pumpkin activities and it’s been a blast!

Read: 15 Ways to Learn and Play with Real Pumpkins!

We have one more pumpkin activity to squeeze in before Halloween is over (it may be October 31st but we still have a few hours of fun left 😉 )

Pumpkin Color Mixing

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Supplies:

Red paint

yellow paint

ziplock bag

Sharpie marker

I drew a jack-o-lantern face on the ziplock bag and added a few dollops of paint inside (red and yellow).

This is the second time we’ve done a color mixing activity in a bag (see our very popular Color mixing chameleon activity), so I have a couple tips to make this go smoothly for you:

Try to use watery paint Thick paint is hard to smoosh around the bag. I added a few drops of water to make the mixing process easier for us.

Add more of the light color paint When color mixing, the intensity of the darker shade tends to take over. For good color-mixing results, use more of the lighter color to really see the changes.

Encourage fine-motor skills My boys quickly realized they can just pick up the bag and smash the colors together, but I wanted the activity to incorporate more fine-motor work, so I encouraged/challenged them to use their fingers to move the paint around the bag.

This activity is great because it doesn’t leave any messes! Ziplock bags rock when it comes to sensory fun and containing messes.

As kids mix up the colors in the bag, have them guess what the two colors will create after they are mixed. Challenge them to “paint” the whole pumpkin with this new color!

Hang the finished art in a window to make an easy-breezy suncatcher!