It doesn’t get easier than this handprint pumpkin craft! It’s the perfect Thanksgiving project for young children, and you don’t need too many supplies!

As soon as the first leaves of autumn start to fall, people rush out to grab the first pumpkin they can find to carve and decorate their porch. That’s how synonymous pumpkins are with fall!

But it’s not just Fall and Halloween, pumpkins are also an integral part of Thanksgiving traditions. Let’s find out how that happened!

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Why are pumpkins associated with Thanksgiving?

Pumpkins have always been a part of Native American culture, being cooked by roasting, stewing and other ways. As the 19th century began, other squashes began to be sold in city markets, while the pumpkin remained a farm vegetable.

By the middle of the 19th century, the pumpkin was so ingrained into farming culture that it even became a symbol of the anti-slavery movement. As a result, when Thanksgiving became a national holiday in the middle of the Civil War, the pumpkin shot to the spotlight and has been associated with the festival ever since!

So now that we know a little history, let’s celebrate the humble pumpkin with a cute, easy handprint pumpkin craft for kids!

Super Easy Handprint Pumpkin Craft for Kids

Supplies required:

Colored craft paper
Pencil
A pair of scissors
Craft glue
Sharpies in different colors

How to make the Handprint Pumpkin Craft:

1. Download and print the Handprint Pumpkin Craft template. The template contains parts of the pumpkin, including the base, the handprint stem, the strip for the vine, eyes and cheeks.

2. Trace the parts of the template on colored craft paper and cut them out. As for the handprint, you can either use the one provided in the template or make your own by outlining your hand on colored craft paper directly. Use orange paper for the pumpkin, brown for the stem, and green for the handprint and vine strip. Go with pink for the cheeks and white for the eyes.

3. Take out your Sharpies and choose an orange that’s a tad darker than the shade of the craft paper you are using for the pumpkin base. Use it to draw outlines on the pumpkin shape as shown below.

4. Use a black Sharpie to draw pupils on the eye cutouts. Stick the eyes in the middle of the pumpkin, as shown here.

5. Hold on to that black Sharpie – we need it to draw the mouth! Use glue to attach the cheeks on either side of the smile and you have a cute face for your handprint pumpkin craft!

6. Time to move on to the main part – the handprint! Stick the stem on the thumb of the green handprint. You’ve heard of a green thumb, but I wonder if there’s something called a brown thumb!

7. Apply some glue to the base of the handprint and stick the pumpkin on it as shown in the image below. It should be placed so that the thumb of the handprint, i.e., the stem, appears directly above the pumpkin, with the fingers, i.e., the leaves, to the side. Your handprint pumpkin craft is looking good!

8. Take the long green strip and twist it into a coil shape. Pull out the two ends of the strip to get a vine shape. You can make more than one vine if you like.

9. Attach the paper vines to the pumpkin, near the stem.

10. Use a brown Sharpie to draw an outline for the stem, and that’s it – your handprint pumpkin craft is ready!

One way to use this handprint pumpkin craft is to make multiples of them and string them to make an adorable banner for your last-minute Thanksgiving festivities. You can also substitute the orange with yellow, to mix things up a little!

If you’d like to try out more easy pumpkin crafts for Thanksgiving, we recommend these: