Stumpkin Craft

Have you read the sweet Halloween book Stumpkin? I love this book because it talks about something we often have to address in our classrooms, feeling left out. I knew I wanted to use this book to talk about these feelings, and I wanted a hands-on activity to go along with the read-aloud. This Stumpkin craft has multiple steps, but it’s flexible. One of those steps is to mix watercolors to make the color orange, don’t skip this step, yes it’s easier just to give your students orange paint, but the process of making it themselves is a significant part of this activity.

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The Book

Stumpkin by Lucy Ruth Cummins is a sweet Halloween story from a pumpkin’s point of view. Stumpkin is perfect in every way, except he doesn’t have a stem, which seems to be enough to discourage people from buying him. Children relate to this feeling of being left out, the last one picked and left behind. This book is an excellent read-aloud for a class, and the “surprise” ending is always a hit! The text is the perfect length for a PreK circle, and the illustrations will make you want to buy a second copy just to frame them!

 

Stumpkin Activity for Preschool

Gather your materials. You will need some watercolor paper, some crayons, red and yellow liquid watercolors, an eyedropper, scissors, and a paintbrush.

Cut your watercolor paper into a circle.

Use the crayons to draw Stumpkin’s stump.

Now it’s time for his face. You can draw any emotion you want. Happy, sad, angry, surprised. You can draw Stumpkin before he becomes a jack-o-lantern or what he looks like after.

Now it’s time for color mixing! Put a few drops of red into your yellow, and voila!

Orange! <– if you are doing this with students, always have extras for children that spill.

Now it’s time to paint. You can paint right over the face and stump because the watercolors won’t penetrate the crayon. You will definitely want to do this on a tray or a surface that can get liquid watercolor on it because it is very liquid. This is also why you need to use watercolor paper.

Let dry.