With Halloween quickly approaching, many kids and their families are looking forward to decorating and carving pumpkins into spooky and fun jack-o-lanterns. But beyond the simple eyes, nose, and mouth style, it can be challenging to come up with new ideas for pumpkin carving each year.
To inspire you, here are some creative ideas for pumpkin carving designs and how our nanny services can help your kids carve the best pumpkins for Halloween.
Carved Pumpkin Bowl
Who says your pumpkin can’t be both functional and decorative? One idea is to slice a large pumpkin in half horizontally and scoop everything out from the bottom half. Then you can fill the bottom with juice boxes on ice, wrapped candy, or party favors. Don’t forget to decorate the outside of the pumpkin’s bottom half with spiders, spider webs, or other Halloween décor.
Diorama Pumpkins
Kids are sometimes tasked with making dioramas for school projects, so this pumpkin carving idea should come naturally to them! Cut a large, oval hole in the front of your pumpkin and scoop out the insides. Then you can fill the space with anything you like to make a festive fall scene, such as miniature tombstones, tiny trees, and a moon in the sky.
Patterns for Pumpkin Carving
For older kids and children who are interested in making art, it’s fun to try a stencil design for a jack-o-lantern. You can find free, downloadable templates online for cute and creepy pumpkin carving designs with stencils that you can trace and cut out. With stencils, you won’t have to free-hand the intricate designs and can make a wide variety of festive scenes, such as fall leaves, spider webs, skulls, werewolves, and black cats.
Colorful Mini Carved Pumpkins
Most people only think about carving the big orange pumpkins, but you can make a carving activity with those small white pumpkins too. To give white pumpkins a bit of color, you can soak them in food coloring in the same way you would for Easter eggs. Since the pumpkins are small, keep your carving designs simple and traditional with just a face. The easy part is that you don’t even need to scoop out the inside materials – just cut the face out from the front side. These make excellent table decorations for a party or be placed just around the house for daily enjoyment.
Drilled Holes in Pumpkins
Who says you need to limit yourself to just a knife to carve a pumpkin? Another fun idea is to drill holes into a pumpkin for a unique and decorative look. You can draw patterns onto your pumpkin first so you know where you want to make the drill holes. When you place a candle or LED light inside, the effect with light shining through the holes is really stunning!
Nannies and Pumpkin Carving
Although pumpkin carving can be a ton of fun, not all parents have the time to sit down with their kids to do this time-consuming activity right now. However, nannies specialize in making the holidays fun for kids and doing all of the festive activities with them that parents can’t always get around to. During the recent pandemic times, nannies have needed to get especially creative with planning kid-friendly activities by scheduling in craft days, at-home fitness classes, gardening sessions, improv games, and science projects. Pumpkin carving is just one more fun thing that nannies can do with your children when you hire an awesome one through Household Staffing International.
Check out our website to browse candidates or fill out our online application form to tell us more about your family’s needs. We look forward to helping you make the most of this Halloween season!