Pumpkin Gak

Have a little fall fun with pumpkin gak!

Everyone ready for a little bit of a toddler mess?

Just kidding… this wasn’t that big a mess. What is pumpkin gak? Loads of sensory fun for my toddler and a great way to play during the Fall and Halloween. Making this pumpkin gak activity was perfect!

Setting up pumpkin gak is so easy!

Materials:
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pumpkins
cornstarch
water
under the bed tub

Gak is one of my favorite go-to projects for kids of all ages, and I wanted to do a fun fall take on it. If you haven’t made gak before, jump on that train. It’s sometimes called Oobleck as a shout out to Dr. Seuss’s book “Bartholomew and the Oobleck”, but whatever you call it, it’s bomb.

To make gak, use 2 parts cornstarch to one part water. I did 1 cup of corn starch to 1/2 a cup of water here.

For my “fall take” on this classic, I added orange food coloring and two good spoonfuls of cinnamon to spice things up a bit (see what I did there?) and make it smell Autumn delicious. I poured the gak into our under the bed tub along with our pumpkins and some kitchen utensils.

My vision: have my son grab the gak with his hands and decorate the pumpkins with it, play in it, have messy fun with it.

His reality: never actually touch the gak, but work with his Grandma to spoon it over the pumpkins, whisk it, and turn it with a spatula.

It wasn’t exactly how I imagined this going (I’m thinking “What a fun mess this will be!” “Morning bath here we come!”), but it was still all the fun I was going for. Actually, spooning it over the pumpkins was pretty legit and so was using the spatula with the gak.

So, with your toddler, this could be a huge mess so be ready.

My toddler barely needed a wipe down but he is who he is and I love him to pieces. Either way, he had a lot of fun playing with this and the clean up was just a hose down of the tub and pumpkins, and putting basically every kitchen utensil I own in the dishwasher.