10 Pumpkin Decorating Ideas For Kids

Fall is here which means Halloween and fall activities are quickly approaching. Pumpkin decorating is one of the best fall bonding activities for kids and families. Check out some of our tips for decorating pumpkins with your kids, and then take a stab at some of our favorite ideas!

Tips for Decorating Pumpkins With Kids

  1. Find a pumpkin with a larger surface area if you plan to carve. This gives more area to work with carvings tools and leaves room to cover up any errors.
  2. Depending on their age, we recommend leaving the carving to the adults and let the kids focus on the other things like scooping the ooey gooey pumpkin guts out.
  3. Let them pick out the design! They may not be old enough to carve the design but letting the kids choose the design makes them feel more involved.
  4. Whether you’re outside or inside, lay down newspaper or a dedicated tablecloth for easier clean up.
  5. Paint your pumpkin! There are tons of fun paint designs you can do that are even better than pumpkin carvings to keep younger kids involved and entertained just as well as carving a pumpkin.
  6. Use stencils and carving kits! Pumpkin decorating doesn’t have to be challenging if you aren’t the artist in the family. Stencils, printouts, carving kits, even power tools can be used as your cheat code for pumpkin decorating.

Our Favorite Pumpkin Decorating Ideas

Whether you’re looking to paint or carve your pumpkin, we’ve listed some of our favorite ideas to give you some inspiration and get your creative juices flowing! We’ve got unique designs for beginners and even the more advanced pumpkin artists.

Best Pumpkin Painting Ideas

 

1. The Movie Theater Tray

For the movie-lovers in the house, this is a cute and creative design. You can even add your favorite candies or movie themed toys to the tray!

Two pumpkins painted. The one on the left is painted like A&W Rootbeer and the one on the right is a popcorn bucket.

2. The S’more Pumpkin

Everyone will love the pumpkin version of this classic fall snack. We just recommend keeping it away from the bonfire!

Pumpkin painted like a s'more!

3. The Bubble Gum Pumpkin

As if Dubble Bubble wasn’t already hard enough to chew, now it’s a pumpkin! 4/5 dentists would not recommend trying to chew this one, but it does make for a great display if you want to hand out real bubble gum for Halloween!

pumpkin decorated like dubble bubble bubble gum.

4. Hockey Pumpkin

We love sports so much, it was hard to pick just one sporty pumpkin, but the hockey pumpkin really won us over. How can you say no to the baby pumpkin puck as an added bonus?! You can also use googly eyes if you don’t want to carve out holes for the eyes.

Visit our Pinterest page for more sports themed pumpkins.

Pumpkin painted like a hockey player with a small hockey stick poking through it. Next to the pumpkin, is a baby pumpkin painted like a hockey puck.

5. The Spa Pumpkin

Moms, this one is especially for you! Manifest that much needed spa day with your pumpkin this year. But make sure you use a real mask on your face, not the green paint 😊

pumpkin painted like it's enjoying a spa day. It has a green face mask and a towel wrapped around the top.

Best Pumpkin Carving Ideas

 

1. Branded Pumpkin Carving

Carve your favorite brand into a pumpkin! We’d recommend an i9 Sports® logo, but this Chick-fil-A pumpkin and Nike slogan examples were just too good not to show off.

2. The VW Van Pumpkin

We added this one for our more advanced pumpkin carvers. The VW pumpkin looks awesome lit up at night, but it does involve some shaving to achieve the lighter pumpkin color on top.

pumpkin carved into a Volkswagon van.

3. The Pirate Ship

This is one of our favorites for outside-the-box thinkers. Not only does this involve cutting half of the pumpkin off, but you have to turn it on its side. This is a very fun and unique way for pirate lovers to carrrghve your pumpkin!

Pumpkin carved into a pirate ship with 4 masts.

4. The Skelly

Looking to impress the neighborhood with your carving skills? We love this one! The hardest part about this design is finding pumpkins big enough and getting them to stay on top of one another. The shapes are relatively simple, and it will wow the kids coming up to your door this Halloween.

3 pumpkins stacked on top of one another and carved into a skeleton.

5. Football Player Pumpkins

Put your carving and painting skills to the test with this sporty pumpkin idea! Get a smaller pumpkin and carve a face into it. Get a larger pumpkin that you can carve a helmet out of and put over the smaller pumpkin face. Paint the helmet your favorite team colors!

Pumpkins carved to look like football players with helmets.

There are so many ideas to choose from, it can be overwhelming. But don’t worry, you can also keep it simple. Carve funny faces, use simple shapes to create a classic Jacko-lantern, or use stencils of your favorite characters. Now, get out there and start searching for your perfect pumpkins!