Button and Ribbon Pumpkins

I am absolutely in love with all of the pumpkin ideas I am finding this year. Jamie has a round up of 40 amazing pumpkin activities over at Hands On: As We Grow right now... just in case you need more inspiration.

Two of my favorite ideas this year have both been no-carve pumpkin crafts. One with buttons and one with ribbon. I created some of these actual pumpkins last week with the teenage girls from church and it was a fabulous language experience. For an hour we created while we snipped ribbon, selected buttons, glued them on to the pumpkins, and admired one another's creations.

I thought this would be an awesome language experience to replicate with preschoolers. The buttons and ribbons are so fun and unique that they just make it difficult NOT to be talking the entire time.

Materials Needed:

- ribbon (I got about 6 different ones in spooky/Halloweeny colors, but you could just use what you have lying around)

- pumpkin foam shapes (or cardstock/cardboard in the shape of a pumpkin)

- buttons (variety is key- small, thin, thick, big, etc.)

- Elmer's glue

- scissors

Directions:

1. First we glued the buttons on.

2. Then we snipped the ribbon into different sizes.

3. Then we glued the ribbon on... and let the pumpkin dry.

My main goal during this activity is to create a fun language experience. Adults can talk about colors, shapes, and sizes with the kids and encourage the children to talk with one another. You could also make large cardboard pumpkins and have this be a shared experience by putting children together with a partner. The children could work together to add the buttons and ribbon and discuss where they want each object to go.

The product is simple and very open-ended because the process is the most important part of this activity.

Children may also love doing these other skills along with this activity:

- snipping ribbon with scissors

- sorting/categorizing buttons and ribbon

- talking about and touching objects with different textures