Paper Pumpkins

These little paper pumpkins are so simple, but they look really pretty as a decoration. This is one of those crafts that are easy enough for kids to make, but you can really dress them up to actually decorate a room. Originally, I just made a few of these in different sized to place around the house, but I’m actually considering making a garland out of these to put on the bookshelves. I’m not sure if it would fight with the spider web garland or not, though…

Anyway, as I said, these are easy enough for kids. My almost-3-year-old was able to make one of these (with help, of course!). It’s a great project for gluing and scissor skill practice. Gluing the bottom part of the pumpkin is very easy, and all the cuts are straight lines – with the exception of the leaf. You could replace the leaf with a rectangle for a stem, if you’re committed to having your little cut the entire thing. For us, Alex cut his three of the four strips before he lost interest in scissors. I consider that a win!

Materials

orange construction paper

green construction paper

Elmer’s glue

scissors

ruler and pencil

Paper Pumpkins, Step-by-Step

Start by using your ruler and pencil to mark off strips. One of the lovely things about this project is that you can make pumpkins of any size, so you can play around with how thick and long you want your strips to be. The only hard and fast rule is that you’re going to need 4 of them of the same length and thickness.

For my small pumpkin, I used strips that were 1/2″ in width and 7″ in length. The larger one was 1″ by 9″.

Next, you’ll cut your strips out, then glue them together in a star shape.

This will form the base of the pumpkin. Your next step is to take each strip and glue it to the strip next to it, going around in a circle. This is what it looks like:

The gluing of the top was easily the hardest part for my little. We made four of these, and settled into a routine where I did the holding and pressing part and Alex did the squirting the glue dot part. Once you get all the way around, your pumpkin looks like this:

Now to decorate! I cut a leaf from green construction paper and glued it to the top. We also cut out a long thin rectangle and wrapped it around a pencil to make the curly vine. You could also cut out a rectangle for a stem, but I didn’t think about that until I sat down to write this post, so ours are stemless. Another idea I had later would be to make a Jack o’Lantern face on the strips with a black marker. That might even be a better plan before you do the gluing. I might have to give that try after I buy some more construction paper.