Cute Jack O Lantern Idea: Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise

These cute jack o lantern felt pumpkin faces help children recognize and explore different emotions. Such a fun way to develop emotional intelligence!

Explore emotions by building Jack O Lantern faces with this simple toddler or preschooler activity.

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My four-year-old daughter Anna loves activities, and she is a very expressive child. She went all in with this simple emotional intelligence activity!

Cute Jack O Lantern Idea: Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise

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Jack O’ Lanterns are incredible emotional intelligence tools! In the past I have used Jack O’Lantern Chains to explore different emotions with my kids. This year I cut out felt pumpkins for my daughter to decorate. It was an easy activity to pull together, and she liked it enough to add a lot of bling to her pumpkins!

How to Make Cute Jack O Lantern Faces out of Felt

Exploring emotions with felt pumpkin faces

These felt pumpkin faces are easy to make! All you need is orange and black felt. Cut the orange felt out in the shape of a pumpkin. Cut various shapes out of the black felt to make eyes, noses, mouths, and eyebrows. My daughter LOVED the eyebrow pieces, and I admit that they add a certain dramatic flair.

Using felt pumpking faces to build emotional intelligence

Using This Activity to Teach Emotions

Anna and I sat together and made several different faces using the different felt shapes. These first three images represent our happy, sad, and surprised faces.

Teach children to recognize emotions using felt pumpkin faces

Anna decided to really extend this activity! She pulled out some metallic autumn confetti she had been hoarding and added it to her versions of these faces. Yes, my four-year-old already hoards craft supplies – but she does put them to use!

Halloween themed emotional intelligence craft for kids

She then proposed gluing the pumpkins to the wall. We compromised by gluing the pumpkins onto construction paper, which we then taped to the wall.

Teach kids all about emotions using felt pumpkin faces

They make for fun and festive kid-made Halloween decorations!

Teach children emotional intelligence with this fun expressive faces craft.

Can you tell that she changed her mad face to be a worried face?

If you don’t have felt on hand and don’t feel like buying it, just use construction paper for this activity – or white paper with orange and black crayons! Turn our wall of pumpkins activity into a wall of emotional pumpkins!

More Pumpkin Themed Activities for Kids

We created this activity to go with 5 Little Pumpkins by Dan Yaccarino. It’s this week’s book for the Virtual Book Club for Kids. My co-hosts came up with some great activities for this pumpkin learning theme – check them out!

Alphabet Pumpkin Learning Activities for Kids

Alphabet Matching Pumpkin Rocks from Inspiration Laboratories

Pumpkin-Themed Name Learning Activities for Kids

Name Spelling Pumpkin Patch Activity from Still Playing School

Pumpkin-Themed Number Learning Activities for Kids

How Many Segments? Pumpkin Math from Teach Beside Me

Sensory Pumpkin Learning Activities for Kids

Pumpkin Sensory Play with Water from The Educators’ Spin On It
Sensory Pumpkin Craft from Mama Smiles

Pumpkin Themed Learn by Cooking Activities for Kids

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies from Mama Smiles
Cinnamon Pumpkin Brownie Recipe from Mama Smiles

Pumpkin Science Learning Activities for Kids

Do Pumpkins Float? From JDaniel4’s Mom
Pumpkin Skin Experiment from Preschool Powol Packets

Do you have a fun pumpkin-themed learning activity for us to try? Have you ever made felt pumpkin faces? Please share photos if you put this cute Jack O Lantern activity idea to use!

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