Making rainbows

Seeing a rainbow is often an exciting time for a child.  The other day we were out driving when we saw a rainbow in the distance.  My little girl was so excited to see it and I realised that we hadn’t really made a big thing about rainbows in the past and she probably didn’t really know what they were.  Without getting in too deep into a conversation about reflection, refraction and the dispersal of light creating a spectrum of colour in water droplets (she’s 2 by the way), we explored what we thought created a rainbow.  She wanted to catch it, so we drove 10 minutes out of our way to try and catch it, before we decided it was moving at the same speed as us so we wouldn’t catch it.  We decided that we would go home and try and make rainbows instead.

Making rainbows are a great way to teach small children about colours.  To make it simple, we have just used primary and secondary colours here as they are easy to make and link back to learning about colour mixing.

 

Pipe Cleaner Rainbow

I start this activity with doing a colour sort.  Using 6 coloured bowls, sort the different coloured beads into the appropriate bowls.

 

Once the beads have been sorted, arrange the lengths of the pipe cleaners. Purple should be the shortest pipe cleaner, followed by blue and so on.

Take a purple pipe cleaner and thread purple beads onto the pipe cleaner.  Continue this with the other coloured pipe cleaners and their corresponding beads.  This is great for fine motor skill development and learning perseverance!  I find that when they get frustrated with one, its time to move onto the next colour.  Or have a break and come back to it.  Don’t expect all of the beads to go on each pipe cleaner.  Also, it pays to put a bend in the opposite end to stop beads from coming off.

 

Assemble the pipe cleaners in rainbow order. Use playdough or blu tak as a base if you want to stand it up.

 

Playdough rainbow

Using primary (Blue, Red, Yellow) and Secondary (Purple, Green, Orange) coloured playdough, roll thick snakes.  Red needs to be the longest, then orange and so on.

Assemble in the order, Red – Orange – Yellow – green – blue – purple

 

Coloured Rice Rainbow

For this activity, you will need

• some coloured rice.  Click here for instructions on how to make it.
• template of a rainbow outline.  I used this one
• PVA glue

 

Start by putting glue on the bottom curve of the rainbow on the template

Sprinkle purple rice on top of the glue.  Hold the edges of the paper and shuffle it around to move the rice grains onto the glue.

Repeat with the other colours

  

 

 

 

 

Before the glue dries, remove any colours that have gone onto the wrong band.  This is good for fine motor development and can be quite a challenge.

Leave to dry