Jack O Lantern Coloring Page

This jack o lantern coloring page shows one huge pumpkin with triangle eyes, a triangle nose and a wide smile with two square teeth. A full moon sits in the corner, a small bat flies past, and two little pumpkins rest on the grass. The shapes are big and the lines are thick, so it suits ages 3 to 9.

A quick sitting takes about 15 minutes, and shading the ribs can stretch it toward half an hour. The pumpkin has five tall ribs, which gives kids an easy way to work: one rib at a time.

Good for little hands and big kids

Toddlers can grab an orange crayon and fill the pumpkin in a few big strokes. That counts as a win. A four year old may want to stay inside the lines of the face, and the triangles are large enough to make that possible.

Older kids get more to think about. They can shade each rib, darker at the edge and lighter in the middle, so the pumpkin looks round. It takes only one extra crayon to do this.

Jack o lantern coloring page color ideas

Orange is the obvious pick, but try two shades. Use the darker one on the outside ribs and the lighter one in the center. Yellow for the eyes, nose and mouth makes it look like a candle burns inside.

The stem can be green or brown. For the sky, a soft purple feels more friendly than black, and it lets the stars show up. If your child wants a true night sky, use dark blue and press lightly so the moon still stands out.

Want something silly? Make a white pumpkin, or a pink one. Real farms grow white pumpkins, and they look great on a porch.

Tips for a neat pumpkin

• Color the face first. Then you can fill the ribs without going over the bright yellow parts.
• Press harder near each rib line. It makes the pumpkin look puffy.
• Use a sharp pencil crayon for the tiny bat, since the wings are thin.
• With markers, put a second sheet under the page so the ink does not reach your table.

Where the jack-o'-lantern came from

The first ones were not pumpkins. People in Ireland carved faces into turnips and set a light inside. An old tale tells of a man called Stingy Jack, who tricked the devil and then had to wander the dark with a coal in a carved turnip. When Irish families moved to America, they found pumpkins, which are bigger and much easier to carve. The jack-o'-lantern article on Wikipedia tells the story in more detail.

Here is a fact that surprises kids. A pumpkin is a fruit, since it grows from a flower and holds seeds. It is also about 90 percent water, which is why a carved one goes soft after a week or so.

Fun after the coloring is done

Cut out the pumpkin and tape it to a window. Sunlight will shine through the paper a little, and it makes a cheap and easy decoration. Kids can also make a whole row, each with a different face. A row of six looks sweet along a hallway at school, and nobody has to clean up pumpkin seeds afterward.

Try a feelings game with young children. Ask them to draw a new mouth on a blank paper pumpkin to show happy, sad or sleepy. This big smiling face gives them a model to copy.

For math, count the ribs, the stars and the pumpkins. Then ask how many pumpkins would be left if one rolled away. For writing, older kids can give the pumpkin a name and list three things it saw on Halloween night.

More Halloween pages to print

Visit our Halloween coloring pages for the whole set. The ghost coloring page has a friendly ghost with a pumpkin pail, and it pairs well with this one. If you want a plain pumpkin patch, print the pumpkin coloring page too.

One last idea. Print this jack o lantern coloring page twice and let two kids color it in totally different ways. Then hang them side by side and vote on the silliest smile.

Questions