The big day for trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples, and doing the Thriller dance with six of your closest friends is nearly upon us.
Seven-year-old Weston Harder, equipped with his Minecraft creeper costume, is ready for the day of fun. He, along with his mother Leslie, got into the spirit of Halloween by creating a pumpkin family.
"We picked one large pumpkin and cut out a window and a door, and then we took five tiny little pumpkins and put faces on them,” says Leslie.
“There was one pumpkin inside,” adds Weston. “All of them have different faces.”
Fine-tuning essential skills
While many consider pumpkin carving an annual tradition that comes along with the Halloween season and nothing more, as with most things, it can serve a practical purpose as well. The activity can help children with their fine motor skills.
Fine motor skills concern the wrists, hands, and fingers. Building manual coordination is an essential part of development for children. A child’s ability to brush teeth, put on shoes, turn pages of books, and write with a pencil fall under the umbrella of fine motor skills.
The act of pumpkin carving can help develop these skills. For the Harders, the pumpkin design they chose was deliberate. They planned to give Weston the opportunity to participate.
“We wanted Weston to be involved with the cutting this year,” says Leslie. “He cut all the straight edges, his dad cut all of the curved edges, and I did all of the drawing.”
Weston also helped remove the stringy insides of the pumpkin, which is another example of practicing fine motor skills. For his part, though, it’s possible that the sliminess is not particularly enjoyable — he says he prefers doing the cutting.
In any case, carving pumpkins can be a pleasant family activity that contributes to the development of dexterity, but safety is important. Children should always carve under the watchful eye of older loved ones, and the right tool makes all the difference.
For Leslie, one step in ensuring safety with her son was purchasing a specialty kit.
“I found it important this year to pick up an actual pumpkin carving kit,” she says. “They were a lot safer to use than, say, a steak knife.”
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Transitory fun, memories
Unfortunately, as fun and educational as carving the Harders’ pumpkin family was, the display was not long-lived because the elements got to it.
“It only lasted three days,” says Weston.
Even so, the family activity was worth it. Carving pumpkins isn’t about a lasting product, but rather the sense of community, bonding, and having fun together. The ephemeral nature of carving perhaps adds to its charm. Even after the canvas rots, the memories remain.
As for Weston, pumpkins are in the past. Right now, he’s looking forward to securing a few Kit-Kat bars in his Halloween haul tomorrow.
~With files from Ty Hildebrand and Jayme Giesbrecht~