Not So Spooky Pumpkin Patch

For some reason, book learning has really been a struggle this week, so today I decided to let my boys do a little hands-on creating.  They were excited the moment they saw me pulling out the "painting sheet." (Painting Sheet=cheap vinyl tablecloth I started using for craft-time a long time ago.  It protects the table and makes for super easy clean-up.  It was cute today to see the kids relate the tablecloth to painting without me saying anything.)

Drawing inspiration from an egg carton craft project I saw a couple weeks ago, I gathered the supplies and sat down with my kids to make pumpkin patches!

Usually I choose crafts that don't require a lot of preparation by Mom beforehand, but today I decided the headache I could avoid by doing some of the work myself seemed worth it.  Those steps included:

• Cutting a 12-egg carton in half so each of my boys would have 6 "pumpkins"
• Cutting a green pipe cleaner into 12 short pieces
• Poking a small hole in the top of each "pumpkin" where the "stem" will go
• Hot Glue the "fence"

The boys got to:

• Paint their "pumpkins" and their "fences"

Okay, so Beck got a little confused and painted his paint plate
 before I re-explained it to him

• Push in their stems 

• Draw on their faces

We were running out of googly eyes,
so each boy got one pair and  then  drew the rest of their eyes

• Pick, cut, and glue on the straw

You could use craft straw, but we had an adventure outside finding dry grass we could use instead.  On the way back home from the field down the street, we had a close call with a snake and barely avoided stepping right on top of it.  The boys LOVED that!

• Choose the best place to display their pumpkin patches for everyone to see.  They decided outside on the front porch so that Daddy would be spooked when he came home.  

Aren't those the cutest "spooky" pumpkins you have ever seen?