Making Creepy Crawly Crafts with Leaves

Bugs are a very common topic of conversation in our house. It is not unusual to walk into a room and hear kids talking about what kind of a bug they want to keep for a pet or what they want to go dig in the dirt to find. So creating these ‘creepy crawly’ crafts with leaves was a great way to merge their love for bugs with the wonderful fall season.

You know I am all about simple activities and this is another one to add to the list! No ‘specialty’ pieces and no difficult instructions. This is something that most preschoolers should be able to do with minimal assistance. I did have to do the majority of it for my three year old, but that is because she isn’t developmentally ready for things like cutting and squeezing a glue bottle. If your child can do those things, then this will be super easy for them!

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Materials needed to make the Creepy Crawly Crafts with Leaves:

Two pipe cleaners (each cut into thirds)

Two foam leaves (or real leaves if you prefer)

One pom pom (for one of ours we used black glitter glue for the head instead of the pom pom)

2 googley eyes

Glue

Scissors

How to make it:

Start by cutting the pipe cleaners into six legs for your creepy crawly. Then, gently poke each leg into one of the foam leaves to secure the legs. This is a great task for building fine-motor skills which are essential for developing hand strength for writing.

After that, take your other leaf and cut it in half down the center to create the wings. Apply glue to the underside of each wing and stick it to the first leaf. You will need some patience as you wait for the glue to dry in this step. If your child can’t hold it still for that length of time, you might try putting a book on top of it until it’s dry. Otherwise the wings will fall off as you assemble the rest.

After you have attached the wings glue your pom pom to the end of the leaves and then glue the eyes to the pom pom. For one of our bugs, we used black glitter glue to create the head. That method works okay if you have the patience to wait for it to dry.

And that’s it. You now have some fun creepy crawlies to accompany your bug learning fun!