Pumpkin play

One of the things that we did to keep busy over the past month, was decorating pumpkins. I found the fun idea (sorry, don't remember where) to use Mr. Potato Head pieces to decorate pumpkins. Lucky for us, Pap Bob bought us a VERY large Mr. PH set last year so we had lot of pieces to choose from.

I thought this was going to be a very easy thing to do with my toddler, and it was, but I did have to do some on the spot prep that, had I known (or thought about it), I would have done before sitting him down to play. So, here's the big tip for ya: Those Mr. PH pieces are made of some flimsy plastic that will not break through the pumpkin on its own. Before you get started, you should use something to poke wholes in the pumpkin where different pieces would normally go (ex: eye hole, mouth, ears, etc). I did this one with a knife, which was fine. About a week later, I did this activity again with my home school enrichment kiddos and decided that I needed something that would just make one straight hole. I ended up using the end of a simple metal meat thermometer. Since those things have pointed ends, it was perfect.

This kept my son busy for a while AND it made for an addition use of our pumpkin: 1. Mr. PH pumpkin, 2. Cut out the jack-o-lantern face 3. Turn the pumpkin into pumpkin puree by steaming in a crock pot for many hours.