Pumpkin Seed Mosaics

This is a fun activity to do with left over pumpkin seeds. We carved a few jack o lanterns this year and had quite a few pumpkin seeds to play around with. I thought about roasting them, but last year the kids didn't really like the taste. I hated to throw them away so decided to do an art lesson on mosaics. We started by discussing what a mosaic picture was and then creating our own.

I looked up a few pumpkin seed ideas as a jumping off point, and then finally decided to do it the way I did. The ideas I saw said to paint the seeds first and then create a picture. But I thought it would be a little easier, and relate more to fall, if I drew the outline of a picture. She filled it with seeds and then painted it. It still looks like a mosaic and it gave her a jumping off point. Knowing her, if I'd followed the advice from the other websites she'd have ended up with a bunch of painted pumpkin seeds saying, "I don't know what to create."

I took a piece of construction paper and drew an outline of a pumpkin for the first one and a pilgrim for the second. She covered the pics with glue, placed the seeds in different directions, dried them over night and then painted them the next day. She really enjoyed this project and we have these displayed on our kitchen cabinets. I think I will get more advanced in the spring with actual tile pieces and let her create something from her mind. Hopefully, her imagination will have grown a bit by then. She's not very imaginative under pressure, but she's great when she thinks no one is watching.