Pumpkin Rocks

We have large rock collection thanks to Aiden’s love for picking up rocks everywhere and some that Patrick has collected over the years. Aiden carries the rocks around the house lining them up, sorting them, and feeding them through holes in boxes. He frequently asks to paint them, so we do. On this particular day, I thought it would be fun to paint our rocks orange and end up with pumpkin rocks. This is a super easy and fun craft for Halloween.

Gather some rocks that are pumpkin shaped {really any rock shape will do}.

Cover your work surface and wear paint clothes. I use a sheet of plastic and some cardboard.

For the paint, I wanted to compare tempera paint and acrylic paint. The acrylic paint {not washable} covered the rocks much more easily. The washable tempera paint did an okay job, but we had to do two coats and you can still see some of the rock underneath. If you don’t have orange paint, don’t forget you can mix red and yellow paint to get your desired pumpkin color.

After your rocks are dry, you can paint on faces to turn your pumpkins into jack o’lanterns. {You could also use a permanent marker.}

My son is really into pumpkins right now. He calls out every. single. one he sees. “A pumpkin!!” He also is really into the faces on the jack o’lanterns. He likes to tell me which faces are scary, which are funny, which are happy, and which are sad. Jack o’lantern faces are a fun way to learn about emotions.

Aiden has been carrying the pumpkins around the house creating little play scenes for them. {Maybe I’ll share a few of his ideas in the future.} We’ve also been playing some games with the pumpkin rocks. The pumpkin rocks have traveled with us in the car as well.

I hope you enjoy the pumpkin rocks as much as we do!

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