Pumpkin Painting

Yesterday we did our annual pumpkin painting with the kids. It is amazing how painting pumpkins each year has been so totally different. The first year Carter was around 9 months old and really loved sticking his fingers in the paint and moving it around the pumpkin, check out our pictures from 2013 here. In 2014 Carter really wasn't into it and I could hardly get him to do it at all. He would run a lap around the yard, stop to paint a little, then take off running again. I ended up mostly just putting his handprints on the pumpkin to cover more space. I wrote about it in our weekly learning theme on pumpkins, which you can read here, because I didn't get very many pictures and it wasn't very exciting. Last year was the craziest year we've had. Elise was younger than Carter was when he painted his first pumpkin and she kept trying to suck her thumb which was getting paint all over her face. I didn't want her to eat the paint even though it was just finger paint and non-toxic so I ended up just putting paint on her feet and letting her kick her pumpkin. Carter was amazing, just sat down and worked on his pumpkin as sweet as could be. We hardly needed to monitor him at all. Check out last year's post here.

Both kids last year compared to this year.

Carter painting his pumpkin, top 2013 and 2014, bottom 2015 and 2016.

Elise painting her pumpkin last year compared to this year.

This year as I was getting out the materials, Carter requested paintbrushes and I was surprised. Every other year he has just finger painted and it didn't occur to me to get out brushes. But he is growing up and moving away from finger paint and more toward big kid painting so it made sense. I was impressed with how well he did, painting his pumpkin with his paintbrush and really working hard. Elise wanted to paint with a paintbrush since Carter was and cracked me up as she dipped the wrong side of her paintbrush down into the paint at one point. I had expected Elise to not have much interest similar to Carter's second year painting so I was impressed with how long she sat working on her pumpkin. I had grabbed some foam stickers for them to use on the pumpkins just in case Elise wasn't into getting her hands dirty. She's hit and miss with having things on her hands and can be a bit sensory sensitive. She put a couple stickers on but for the most part painted. I showed Carter how to put a sticker on and then paint around the sticker and remove it to leave behind the shape of the sticker. He loved that and did it a few times. This year was definitely the most relaxed year of painting we've ever had. I just sat back and took pictures while they painted. There was no intervening or huge mess clean-up. It was actually really nice! When we were done, I just stripped everyone down and threw our clothes and blanket into the wash. Everything came out perfectly clean. I love how the pumpkins turned out! I also love seeing my babies grow and develop and seeing it through the way they paint pumpkins is really neat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With their finished pumpkins.