I don’t always see my Kinders in the first art rotation of the year but when I do, we always make some type of pumpkin project. I love this Funny Face Pumpkin for the sheer cute-factor but one of my favorites are the Starlight Pumpkins we did a couple of years ago.

This year, I adapted one of my favorite first grade lessons, Autumn Collage, to meet the skill set of my Kinders. This is what we did:

CREATE A MOONLIT NIGHT BACKGROUND

I wanted this aspect of the project to be open-ended. I didn’t have a clear idea of what or how I wanted the background to look so I set out some supplies and showed the kids what the supplies did. Toilet paper rolls when dipped in paint create rings, the end of a paintbrush and some paint makes a good star, gold and silver paint can add sparkle, etc.

I used up the left-over metallic paints from last year and added some aqua and white paint to some palettes. We devoted a full class to experimenting with our backgrounds.

PAINTED PAPER PUMPKINS

We created painted paper pumpkins the week before by following my “How to Make Painted Paper”. I cut each 12″ x 18″ paper in half, divided the colors and set the stacks on a table.

When the children were ready to draw their pumpkins, they selected two painted paper colors from the stacks and got to work. We followed the same drawing instructions as the Starlight Pumpkins, then cut out their pumpkins and glued to their background. They selected a small piece of brown painted paper to make their stems and then onto the leaves….

USING TRACERS TO MAKE LEAVES

So now comes the interesting part. I knew it would happen because it does every year. Some children have a hard time grasping the concept of tracing a template. Leaves are a bit hard to draw, especially for a Kinder, and since they drew their own pumpkin, I figured tracing and cutting leaves was an okay way to go. But this is what happened:

• Some kids take the tracer and trace a leaf shape onto the pumpkin (see above top photo)
• Or they color in the template and use the template to stick onto their artwork
• Only about half of my Kinders actually traced the template onto a piece of colored paper.

So is it my instructions? Most definitely yes. I breezed through the steps on how to use the templates because we had spent a long time (about 10 minutes) drawing and talking about the pumpkin shapes. So perhaps if you slowed down, more kids would understand.

Still, I always seemed to encounter the same cute problem year after year. But look at what these little folks did? Aren’t they adorable? Can’t wait to hang them in my art room!

Want more lessons for your fall art activities? Download this lesson guide by clicking the yellow button below and we’ll send you a PDF on How to Draw a Pumpkin!