Our Family's Joyful Pumpkin / Gratitude Pumpkin

For the past two years, we’ve taught mindfulness to what brings us daily JOY by writing gratitudes on a family pumpkin.

As preparation for this Halloween/Thanksgiving/Autumn gratitude activity, we select a LARGE pumpkin and purchase new Sharpie Markers.

Last year several of our pumpkins came from a local farm, but we also snagged a few from our local Aldi, where each pumpkin was under $3! You can’t beat that pumpkin price! (check Sharpie prices on Amazon)

How we’re making our Joyful Pumpkin

Each evening, we spend a few minutes discussing what brought us JOY today.

The first year, our daughter was in first grade, and this exercise was great practice for her spelling, penmanship, and reading. Her lack of precision had our “very precise” son laughing quite a bit, too!

The beauty of a fall gratitude pumpkin is you can make it in October or November. Because the pumpkin is not carved, this pumpkin will last for weeks! You can start this pumpkin in October and keep it on display through Thanksgiving. If you decorate your Halloween pumpkin with vinyl or foam stickers, you can even repurpose it as November’s Joyful Pumpkin.

Family Gratitude Pumpkin - write daily family joys, praises and gratitudes in November on a pumpkin. — *When asked, “What brought you JOY today?” our 4th-grade son wrote, “Playing Prodigy.” This is an educational MATH game! Awesome sauce! Learn more about why we love the Prodigy Math Game*

A gratitude or thankful pumpkin. Kid-written joys and gratitudes written in Sharpie markers. — *Our recent gratitude pumpkin is full of thankful joys like God, Jesus, Dunkin’ Donuts, Ninjago, Chick-fil-A, Hot tubs, Skate Parks, vaccinations, and more! This makes my heart full!* ❤️

Example of family gratitude pumpkin. Joys and gratitudes are written with black sharpie marker on an orange pumpkin. — *Sweet fall memories captured on our family gratitude pumpkin: Lazer tag on a walk at night, losing a front tooth, tea parties, big thoughtful hugs, and trick-or-treating together!*

Celebrate Thanksgiving with a Gratitude Pumpkin

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Looking for other family pumpkin decorating ideas with kids? You might like our list. As a bonus, if you use pumpkin stickers to decorate for Halloween, you can reuse the same pumpkin for a Thanksgiving gratitude pumpkin, too!

More Family Daily Gratitude and Joy Ideas

If you love our Joyful Pumpkin idea, you’ll also enjoy our LEGO Alphabet of Gratitude project and free printable. We started the Alphabet of Gratitude in November 2020, 26 days before Thanksgiving. Each day, we wrote and shared on Instagram our gratitude, prompted by a Lego brick-built letter of the day. Starting at Z, we’ve made our way to A day by day!

*@artsandbricks_abcs We love this! #RebuildTheWorld one letter at a time!*

These same letters we now use in the designs of our personalized Brick-Built Name Decals for kiddos to use as room window and wall decor! Display your child’s name in Arts and Bricks’ Brick Font decals.