Recycle a cereal box and celebrate Halloween with this super cute build-your-own Jack-O-Lantern playdough activity for kids! Mix and match spooky features with your own round little playdough pumpkins for an afternoon of wickedly creative form and design play.
And here’s a frighteningly good Halloween trick AND treat…you can reuse these same cardboard face bits for a rearrangeable jack-o-lantern 2D alternative!
To make your own jack-o-lantern play dough pumpkins you’ll need:
Note: We prefer to shop locally or use what we have at home, but this list contains a few Amazon affiliate links for reference. As Amazon Associates we make a small commission on qualifying purchases.*
BASIC SUPPLIES:
- Play dough
- Scissors
- 1-2 paper straws or similar
- Hot glue gun or craft glue (I like using this adjustable temp glue gun with kids)
- A few cereal box sides to use for our printed features or to cut and create your own
- Our Jack-O-Lantern Activity Printable Template Pack
PLAYDOUGH RECIPE (combine over warm heat):
Makes enough playdough for 1 pumpkin
- 1 1/2 cups of water
- 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
- 6 tablespoons of lemon juice
- Food coloring
- 1/2 cup of salt
- 2 cups of flour
Build-Your-Own Jack-O-Lantern Playdough Pumpkin Instructions:
- Sketch features or download & print our templates
Print out the desired feature pages onto cereal box sides that have been trimmed to fit your printer (you may want to run a test print through first to make sure your printer can handle the thickness of the box).
You don’t have to print our templates though – drawing imaginative jack-o-lantern features is a great creative exercise for kids all on its own! Sketch out your features and pumpkins onto cereal boxes or scrap cardboard and color or paint. - Cut out and color features
Use scissors to cut out all of your features. If you drew your own on cardboard you can color or paint them any way you like! Give ample time to dry.
- Glue straw knobs to your features
We added small, trimmed pieces of paper straw to the backs of our features so we could push them into our pumpkins. Use a hot glue gun to add a little dot of glue to the center back of your eyes, mouths, noses, etc. then attach a short length of paper straw to each. Let dry completely before use.
- Form your pumpkin
You can use store-bought playdough or make your own using our easy recipe. Form your play dough into pumpkin shapes. We squished ours into round balls, then used a piece of cardboard to create the ridges in the sides. You can add a paper leaf and twig stem, as we did, too!
- Design & play!
That’s all there is to it! You can cut out as many pieces or pumpkin shapes as you like to build your own adorable jack-o-lanterns over and over again. The straw knobs make it easy for little hands to push the features into their play dough and re-arrange for hours of fun!
For another upcycled jack-o-lantern craft, use a leftover box to make our DIY cardboard jack-o-lantern shape sorter! For a few more seasonal “build-your-own” crafts, be sure to visit our build-a-felt-turkey DIY and felt fall rainbow tree tutorial.
Here for the boos? We have Halloween covered with this adorable free printable Halloween doodle book, some super hip upcycled costume ideas, a roundup of our fav modern no-carve pumpkins and even a recipe (and ghost stickers!) for healthy homemade Ecto-Cooler!
A note about Amazon affiliate links : We strive to use simple, earth-friendly supplies that can be purchased locally whenever we can, but sometimes we find the best universally available options, a rare eco-friendly find, or a niche product only available on Amazon. When included in our supply list, these products are affiliate links, and if you click-through to make a purchase, we receive a small commission that helps us re-order these supplies!
