Fun Kids Painted Leaf Bugs

We had a lot of fun this past week declaring one day “creative day” in our homeschool schedule. Sometimes it’s a good thing to just throw caution to the wind, and let the kids (and me) get all the creative juices flowing, and make a big mess!

One of the projects we had fun with were these painted leaf bugs. We were happy with the end result and it was fun to collect the leaves and imagine what painted leaf bugs we could create. Don’t you want to make some? I had as much fun with these as the kids.

How To Make Fun Kids Painted Leaf Bugs

Collect leaves of different sizes and shapes. (keep the stem on if you want the fun little “stinger” nose.)
Wipe the leaves off so they are clean.
We used kid friendly water color paints since my kids are 6, but these could be painted with art paints for older kids.
Paint the black head first.
Paint the base color next and let dry. ( or for a simpler way just leave the leaf green and add details)
Use a q-tip to make polka dots ( we started out using a small brush but the q-tip was the easiest to handle for my kids.)
Use small paint brushes for other details if you want them.
Let dry and decorate with your bugs! We laid our bugs on maple leaves and placed them in our homeschool window.

What you see here is our 6 year old version of these beautiful leaf projects. Those wonderful leaf creations were our inspiration and were obviously done by older kids and some fancy paints. We tried the maple leaf owls on that post, and our leaves just curled up after being painted white. We will give those a try again, and I’ll let you know if we are successful.