Colorful Q-Tip Painted Fall Tree Craft for Kids

When it comes to fall, all those colorful leaves make it the perfect time for crafts and activities using leaves.   

After all, with all the reds and golden yellows decorating the trees, who could resist trying their hand at capturing that beauty in art?  

If you are looking for something bright and colorful (and fairly mess-free),  this simple Q Tip painting fall tree craft is perfect for young kids.  

As one of the requirements for the Welcome to the Daisy Flower Garden badge in our  Girl Scout Daisy troop, we decided to make some pretty fall decorations for a local nursing home. 

This fall tree craft was fun for the girls to make, and fairly mess-free.  (Which, as a leader, I loved.) 

As a bonus, painting with Q Tips is a fun way to work on fine motor skills, making this Q Tip fall tree perfect for preschoolers and kindergartners.      For another fun fall craft perfect for working on fine motor skills, check out this turkey craft. 

Q Tip Fall Tree Painting 

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Materials Needed: 

• White paper (Thicker paper like this works better for paint.)
• Washable Acrylic paints in fall colors (We used yellow, orange, red, brown and green.)
• Cotton Swabs
• Brown crayons
• Empty egg carton or paper plate to use as paint pallette

Start your fall tree painting by using your brown crayon to draw a tree trunk and branches in the center of your paper.  

You could also use marker for this, but if it is washable marker the paint may make the marker smear.  We found crayons worked great.  

Get as detailed as you’d like with your tree trunk.  You can add a hole to the tree, or even a couple squirrels on the branches.

Once your trunk and branches are drawn, it’s time for the paint.  

Pour a small amount of each of your paint colors into the portions of an empty egg carton, with one color in each section.   Keeping with the changing colors of the leaves in fall, we used: red, yellow, orange, brown, and green.

Place a couple clean cotton swabs into each color of paint.  

Use the Q Tips to dab small amounts of paint onto the tree branches, creating brightly colored fall leaves.  

Be sure to add a few colorful leaves to the ground below the tree, too.

(Unfortunately, school cafeterias do NOT have good lighting for pictures.)

The fall tree paintings we did at Scouts turned out beautifully. 

And I love that some of the girls chose to draw squirrels in their trees as well.

We brought our fall Q Tip trees to the local nursing home to help cheer up residents.  It was the perfect fall tree craft for kindergartners.  It would be great for preschoolers, too. 

This Q Tip painting fall tree craft looks beautiful hanging up.  

You’ll also like these posts:

• Spring Trees Bundled Q Tip Painting
• Leaf Resist Painting 
• Apple Crafts & Activities 

Originally published on November 15, 2014.