Halloween Fruit Cups Your Preschooler Can Make

These Halloween fruit cups make an adorable pumpkin patch, and are perfect for bringing a healthy prepackaged snack to school that’s as cute as homemade treats.

MAKING PRE-PACKAGED FRUIT CUPS INTO A CUTE HOMEMADE TREAT

A lot of schools require pre-packaged snacks and treats for holidays and birthdays these days. The reasons range from allergies to concerns about food safety. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to turn pre-packaged food into cute treats your child can help make.

These cute Halloween fruit cups seriously took us about 15 minutes to make for Corban’s entire preschool class (18 students). It could have even gone faster if I had done them myself, but it was so much fun to watch him concentrate as he turned pipe cleaners into pumpkin stems and taped them on.

HOW TO MAKE HALLOWEEN FRUIT CUPS PUMPKIN PATCH

To make your own Halloween fruit cups, you just need some mandarin orange cups (we got this 20 pack from Costco for about $9), green pipe cleaners, and tape.

You can use hot glue to attach the stems for a cleaner look, but I wanted them to be really easy for pre-schoolers to pull off to eat their oranges.

Another reason for using tape was that I wanted Corban to be able to help me make them, and wasn’t about to put a hot glue gun in his hands. He’s had a cookie sheet burn, broken arm, and stitches in the last year or so. I just know hot glue would end up in another urgent care trip, and I’m tired of how it seems like we live there. Nothing like being a boy mom!

To make the pumpkin stems, start by folding one end of the pipe cleaner around itself. Keep folding until you have a nice fat little stem about 3/4 of an inch tall. You’ll use about half of the pipe cleaner for the stem.

Finally, you’ll want to wrap the other half of the pipe cleaner around your finger, pull it off, and stretch it out a bit to make a curly-q vine.

Once your stems are made, you can secure them to the bottom of your upside down cups with a little piece of tape.

Corban worked very hard at this step in making his Halloween fruit cups.

We call this the Mills concentration tongue (my maiden name). Both our kids are experts at it!

KEEPING IT REAL

Also, notice that I am one of those moms who forgets to wipe her childrens’ faces before taking photos or leaving the house?

I thought about photo-shopping the blueberry smears off of his face, but we like to keep it real here.

If you make these Halloween fruit cups for your kiddos, we’d love to see your photos! Be sure to share them on Instagram and tag us @EatingRichly so that we can check them out!

SUPPLIES FOR HALLOWEEN FRUIT CUPS

Here are the supplies we used to make these Halloween fruit cups. The tray listed is similar, but ours was purchased at Hobby Lobby. By clicking one of these links before making a purchase on Amazon, we get a small percentage of your purchase, yet it doesn’t cost you anything extra! Thanks for helping to support our family business.

HALLOWEEN FRUIT CUPS PRINTABLE INSTRUCTIONS

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Halloween Fruit Cups

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These Halloween fruit cups make an adorable pumpkin patch, perfect for bringing a healthy prepackaged snack to school that's as cute as homemade treats. We find this takes about a minute per cup with our preschooler helping.

Prep Time 1 minute

Total Time 1 minute

Ingredients

• cups Mandarin orange, 1 per person
• green pipe cleaners, 1 per person
• roll of clear tape

Instructions

1. Turn the orange cups upside down on a serving tray.
2. Working with one pipe cleaner at a time, fold one half of the pipe cleaner around itself (starting at the end) to make a fat little stem.
3. Wrap the other half around your finger, pull it off, and stretch it out slightly to make a curly vine.
4. Use a small piece of tape to secure it to the bottom of an orange cup, on the vine right at the base of the stem.
5. Repeat with remaining pipe cleaners and stems