After we hammered our pumpkins, we decided to reuse them. The natural thing was to carve them up, scoop them out and wash the seeds. It was a wonderful idea, I thought, but the thing was – nobody wanted to touch the pumpkins once we cut them open. We had to give them spoons but still, it was not until we put the ‘pumpkin guts’ into a sealed bag, that the kids started playing with them. And the seeds? We had to wash them so they help us count how many we found. We need more sensory play it seems…

Then we flipped the pumpkin halves over and started painting them. We kept talking about the holes in those pumpkins.

Can I paint the holes?

Can we stick something in those holes? 

It looks like we have to add something here!

Q-tips to the rescue! We searched our art center and q-tips were the things we had plenty off and they fit in those holes. As an added bonus they could be used to paint with and they could be painted themselves! That’s how our pumpkin hedgehogs were came to be.

And since the hedgehogs needed to be more ‘cheerful’ we decided to add some tissue paper squares, sequins and glitter. Kids worked together (2-4 kids per hedgehog) and made pumpkins to remember!