Halloween is just one short week away! We’re currently putting the finishing touches on our family costume for next week and squeezing in as many activities as we can. Every year, we visit several u-pick farms that set up a pumpkin house display and Elliot really enjoys them. This year, he asked if he could turn his pumpkin into a house instead of carving a design and I thought that was a great idea! This little pumpkin house can be many things- a home for fairies, gnomes or woodland animals. We decorated ours with nature items that Elliot collected this season and a lot of the ideas for details were Elliot’s! I assisted him with trickier steps such as cutting and attaching using the hot glue gun. This is a great project that parents and children will enjoy doing together and will foster beautiful small world play.

Materials:

– pumpkin
– thin sticks
– natural items such as pinecones, moss, rocks, acorns, dried beans, leaves, feathers, seed pods, gumnuts, bark, fresh greenery
– air dry clay
– natural twine
– knife for carving
– hot glue gun (preferred) or craft glue

Step 1: How to add windows and a door.

Gather all of your materials. Start by cutting an opening out for the door and windows. Remove all of the seeds and flesh from inside of the pumpkin. Add frames to the windows by adding two thin sticks to each window. Attach the vertical stick first by inserting it into the flesh and then repeat with the second horizontal stick.

Step 2: How to make a bridge for the front door

Create a bridge for the front door by glueing sticks of equal length together. You can either glue the sticks together directly if they are fairly straight, or glue two short supporting bars across the bottom of each end. Elliot did not want a door on his fairy house (although you can certainly make one using this same technique.

Step 3: How to make a ladder and swing

To make the ladder, start with two long thin sticks and glue short rungs at equal distances. Lean against the outside of the house. To make the swing, choose a small flat piece of bark to use for the seat. Attach two knotted pieces of twine on each side using glue. I was originally going to attach the swing inside of the pumpkin but Elliot suggested that we “make a stand for it” so it could be an outdoor swing. We used the airdry clay to secure the stand to a base and used the pumpkin as support for the other end.

Step 4: Add additional accents to the house

Add accents to your house using your natural materials. We added moss and leaves to the roof as well as a small pretend bird nest with eggs that Elliot made out of clay. We also glued a seed pod under one of the windows to make a window planter. The trees were made by creating bases out of air dry clay and using them to hold sprigs of fresh greenery upright. As a final touch, Elliot added beans and lots of small pinecones. He said they were “things for the animals to collect and eat”.