Pumpkin Seed Activities For Kids

When the leaves start falling, and you begin carving pumpkins with the kids, we’d like to encourage you to save all those seeds for some fun fall activities. They’re terrific as learning manipulatives or as a crafting material. Pumpkin seeds also make pretty terrific snacks! So, to get you started with some creative ideas, we’ve compiled 18 pumpkin seed activities for kids. Make pumpkin seed slime, work on spelling, or learn to count. You’ll find so many fun ways to use them this autumn!

Pumpkin Seed Activities for Kids

How to Dye Pumpkin Seeds from Fun-a-Day:

Learn how to dye pumpkin seeds to use as math manipulatives, in discovery bottles, or as part of your fall art projects. Using these tips and liquid watercolors, you’ll have brightly colored seeds that will stay beautiful all autumn long.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds from Boulder Locavore:

It just isn’t autumn without making some roasted pumpkin seeds of your own. The kids can help with this simple recipe using pumpkin seeds, oil, salt, and any other spices you’d like to add.

Pumpkin Guts Squishy Sensory Bag from Fantastic Fun and Learning:

Scoop out all those pumpkin guts and plop them into a large baggie to create a squishy sensory bag for your baby, toddler, or preschooler. There are so many fun textures among the pulp and seeds.

Pumpkin Seed 10-Frame Counting from Stay at Home Educator:

A silicone pumpkin mold is a perfect material to use as a 10 frame for math practice! Using dice, pumpkin seeds, and the mold, your little one can roll the dice, count, and place the corresponding number of seeds into the tray.

Word Families with Pumpkin Seeds from Lessons for Little Ones:

Practice word families such as hat, bat, and cat with pumpkin seeds. Use a Sharpie to write the letters on each seed.

Pumpkin Jiggly Slime from Natural Beach Living:

Do your kids love slime? Work some pumpkin seeds into your next slime recipe, or make this jiggly orange pumpkin slime made with glue, saline solution, and baking soda.

Pumpkin Playdough Invitation to Play from Fantastic Fun and Learning:

Set up a playdough invitation to play for the kids using pumpkin spice playdough, pumpkin seeds, acorns, leaves, and sticks. Add any other fall goodies you like, too, such as real spices like cinnamon sticks.

Counting Pumpkin Seeds from Typically Simple:

Counting pumpkin seeds is an excellent activity for toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergarteners. Of course, you can use any manipulatives you want with these worksheets—buttons, candies, mini pom-poms, etc.—but since this post is all about pumpkin seeds, we recommend using the real thing!

Pumpkin Seed Fall Tree from Fun-a-Day:

Use dyed pumpkin seeds as leaves on trees in your fall art projects. They’re perfectly shaped for this task. Do your project on canvas for a gorgeous project you can put out on display year after year in the fall.

Pumpkin Seed Shape Mats from Fantastic Fun & Learning:

Use pumpkin seeds to outline shapes, as you see here. Not only is this a great idea to help kids learn to identify their shapes, but they’re encouraged to count the number of seeds they use to write that number in at the bottom. Isn’t that clever and fun?

Turkey Pumpkin Seed Art from Fun-a-Day:

These pumpkin seed turkeys are colorful and fun! You could use the same idea to make peacocks with big, beautiful tail feathers made of pumpkin seeds, too.

Parts of a Pumpkin Craft from Lessons for Little Ones:

With a paper plate, some orange paint, orange yarn, and pumpkin seeds, your child can quickly learn the basic parts of a pumpkin. Plus, it makes an adorable craft to display in October or November.

Name Activities with Pumpkin Seeds from Fun-a-Day:

Use colorful pumpkin seeds to spell out your child’s name. It will be a super cute addition to your child’s room during autumn.

Counting with Pumpkin Seeds from PreKinders:

Cut, print, and laminate the pumpkin number cards, and use your pumpkin seeds to count out the appropriate number for each card. It’s a great activity for preschoolers!

Count and Clip Pumpkin Seeds from Typically Simple:

No real pumpkin seeds are required for these count-and-clip cards; you just need the cards and some clothespins. However, if you’d like for the kids to fit in more counting practice, they could count out real pumpkin seeds to match the numbers on the cards.

Pumpkin Letter Matching Game from Fantastic Fun and Learning:

Write letters on pumpkin seeds to play this fun letter matching game. You could match uppercase letters to uppercase ones or lowercase to uppercase.

Pumpkin Guts Slime from Parenting Chaos:

Here’s a slime recipe that uses all of the pumpkin “guts” to make the slime—not just the seeds. It gives the slime lots of cool texture as the kids stretch and pull it.

Pumpkin Seed Christmas Trees from Unskinny Boppy:

If you have any pumpkin seeds left over in late November, it’s time to turn them into some pretty Christmas trees for your table or mantle. You’ll need a styrofoam cone and a glue gun for this project. Use low-temperature glue if you’re making this craft with little kids.

Pin this list of pumpkin seed activities to try with your little ones this fall!