Veronika and I did a quick abstract art project today to help her paint her first “pumpkin”!

I love art at around age 2, because toddlers are just beginning to tell you what they’re drawing, even if you can’t always see it. So I thought it would be fun to guide Veronika through a jack o’ lantern painting. I set out watercolor paper along with orange and black paint.

“A pumpkin starts as an orange circle,” I told her. Of course her pumpkin was going to be “abstract”, but she loved dabbing the orange on the paper.

She quickly was more interested in black paint, pressing the brush firmly onto the paper, which almost made black triangles. So I showed black triangle eyes on my pumpkin!

As she worked on her “pumpkin”, I worked on mine. Often, I find myself jumping in with my kids’ artwork, and this project was the perfect reminder to let her take ownership of her work.

She told me she was drawing a black square, and we talked lots about shapes and colors as we worked.

In the end, we had a perfect toddler pumpkin painting, and a mommy one to boot!