A pumpkin pretending to be a ladybug is exactly the kind of Halloween disguise I can get behind. This ladybug pumpkin disguise craft turns the usual orange pumpkin into a bright red bug with oversized eyes, black spots, antennae, and six little legs. Kids ages 5-7 can put the whole disguise together in about 20-30 minutes.

Pumpkins can dress up as just about anything, so there’s no reason to stop at a ladybug. Our pumpkin crafts for kids have even more ways to turn them into Halloween characters and fall projects.

Collage of completed ladybug pumpkin crafts with black spots, smiling faces, antennae, and legs.

Good To Know

Themes: Pumpkin disguise project, Halloween, fall
Activity: Cut and assemble ladybug pieces to disguise a pumpkin with spots, wings, antennae, legs, and a face
Templates: Includes a free printable ladybug pumpkin disguise template
Ages: Preschool through first grade
Time: 20-30 minutes
Skills: Cutting, gluing, shape placement, spatial awareness, scissor control, and fine motor practice

Hide the Pumpkin as a Ladybug

Those big black spots are what really sell the disguise. Add the round ladybug face over the pumpkin, then the antennae and legs, and suddenly the pumpkin underneath almost disappears. The stem poking out at the top is the funny little giveaway.

Kids get to work with several different shapes as they build the disguise, and there’s plenty of cutting and gluing along the way. Figuring out where all those spots and legs belong gives them something to think about too, especially when they’re trying to make their ladybug look balanced.

The finished project has a lot going on visually, but the individual pieces are simple and easy to recognize. Once that big red pumpkin body and black face are together, the rest of the ladybug details fall into place pretty quickly.

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Supplies

Colored cardstock or construction paper
Scissors
Glue
Crayola Bold & Bright marker
Ladybug pumpkin disguise template (click the “click here to get your freebies” image at the end of the post)

Directions

Start by printing the template, then gather the materials for this fun activity. Get those scissors ready, and let’s help the kids bring this ladybug pumpkin to life!

Hands holding a printable ladybug pumpkin craft coloring page featuring a cute ladybug design.

Take the spots and glue them around the pumpkin body. Let your child spread them out across the pumpkin to create the ladybug’s classic spotted look.

Hands gluing black spots onto the red pumpkin body for the ladybug pumpkin craft.

Grab the head and glue the eyes side by side near the center.

Hands gluing the eyes onto the ladybug head beside the spotted pumpkin body.

Use a bold & bright marker to draw a happy smile below the eyes. Let your child choose the expression they want their ladybug to have and talk about how different expressions can show different feelings.

Hands drawing a smile on the ladybug head beside the spotted pumpkin body.

Add the eyebrows above the eyes with the same marker. These little details give the ladybug even more personality, so kids can have fun making the expression their own.

Hands drawing an eyebrow above the ladybug’s eye beside the spotted pumpkin body.

Take the two antennae and glue them to the back and top of the head so they stick up above it. Fold the top end of each antenna slightly to give them a little extra dimension.

Hands folding the ends of the ladybug antennae beside the spotted pumpkin body.

Glue the completed head onto the lower center of the pumpkin body. Your pumpkin disguise is really starting to look like a ladybug!

Hands positioning the ladybug head onto the center of the spotted pumpkin body.

Glue the stem to the back and top center of the pumpkin body so it peeks out above the pumpkin.

Hands attaching the stem to the top center of the ladybug pumpkin craft.

Take the right leg pieces and glue them along the bottom right.

Hands attaching the ladybug legs to the bottom of the pumpkin body.

Finally, glue the left leg pieces along the bottom left of the pumpkin body. Position them so they peek out from underneath, then your ladybug pumpkin disguise is complete!

Hands gluing the ladybug legs to the bottom of the pumpkin body.

From arranging the spots to adding the final legs, kids get plenty of hands-on practice while having fun hiding the pumpkin as a cute ladybug. Take a look at the related crafts and activities below for more ideas that fit right into seasonal lesson plans or themed activity days.

Hands holding a completed ladybug pumpkin craft with black spots, a smiling face, antennae, and six legs.

Halloween Books for Children

Room On The Broom: This has to be one of our favorite Halloween books of all time! The story follows a witch and her cat as they happen upon some animals who help the witch. There’s danger, mystery, and friendship in this adorable children’s story.

The Good, The Bad, And The Spooky: Halloween is the Bad Seed’s favorite holiday, but when he can’t come up with the perfect costume, he decides trick-or-treating should be postponed for everyone! Kids will love following his funny quest to find a show-stopping costume before the big night. With plenty of humor and Halloween fun, this is a great seasonal read for fans of The Bad Seed and the Food Group series.

Ten Timid Ghosts: This is a fun countdown book about a witch who moves into a haunted house where 10 ghosts already live. The witch scares the ghosts out one by one until they devise a scheme to get her out of their house. This Halloween children’s book is good for kids who love rhyming stories!

Side by side completed ladybug pumpkin crafts with black spots, smiling faces, antennae, and legs.

Creative Spooky Season Crafts

Vampire Disguise A Ghost Craft – Give a friendly ghost a spooky makeover with a vampire disguise! This Halloween activity is a fun way for kids to practice important skills and creative thinking while also turning a ghost into a charming little vampire. Grab our free template and a handful of supplies to get started!

Skeleton Halloween Craft – There’s something especially fun about building a skeleton one bone section at a time. Kids assemble the skull, ribs, hips, arms, and legs on a background page, so it feels a little like putting together a very Halloween-ish puzzle.

collage image of Creative Spooky Season Crafts

Witch Paper Plate Craft – The face is where kids really get to have some fun with this witch. After the green paper plate, orange hair, and hat are in place, they draw the eyebrows, nose, and smile themselves. Silly witch? Grumpy witch? That part is completely up to them.

Cat Mummy Craft – Turn a cute kitty into a spooky Halloween mummy! Kids can piece together this cat mummy for a purr-fectly fun project using our free template. We also have a color, cut and paste version available for your younger kiddos, too. This easy Halloween cat adds just the right amount of spooky-cute charm to the season.

Fun Halloween Learning Pages

Take a magical ride through learning with these Room on the Broom worksheets! Kids will trace different paths, label the witch, complete picture patterns, and hunt for uppercase and lowercase ‘Dd’s.

The character flashcards add more fun with a memory game that also increases their vocabulary. These Halloween worksheets help strengthen fine motor skills, pattern recognition, letter recognition, and visual discrimination while bringing the story to life.

collage image of Fun Halloween Learning Pages

Your little witches and wizards can practice important pre-writing skills with our Halloween tracing worksheets. The Cc for Crow page helps children recognize and trace uppercase and lowercase C, and the Trace the Hat page strengthens pencil control and hand-eye coordination.

Additional line tracing worksheets have kids follow straight, wavy, and zigzag paths to Halloween characters to build fine motor skills and prepare their hands for writing.

A completed craft featuring a ladybug pumpkin with black spots, a smiling face, antennae, and six legs.

Let kids color their Halloween decorations using these bat color by numbers pages! They’ll follow the number guide to choose the right colors and reveal four cute bats, including a sleeping, smirking, hanging, and happy bat.

These pages will give children practice with number recognition and coloring inside the lines strengthens fine motor skills, pencil control, and hand-eye coordination.

Halloween fun begins one dot at a time with our Halloween dot to dot printables! Kids will count and connect the dots to reveal a waving ghost, black cat with a pumpkin basket, and jack-o-lantern wearing a witch hat.

Once their spooky pictures appear, they can color them in to bring their Halloween friends to life. These Halloween connect the dots also help children practice number recognition, counting, hand-eye coordination, and fine motor skills.

Did you make this activity with your kids or students? We’d love to feature them on our social media!

For a chance to have your child’s project featured, simply snap a picture of the completed project and post it to our Facebook page, email it to us directly by clicking here, or use #simpleeverydaymom on your social media!

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