Somewheeeere over the rainbow blue biiiiiirds flyyyyyyyyy! Oh hey there! Welcome to my toddler rainbow activities post! Both of my boys (and most of the adults I know) marvel at rainbows whenever they appear. They’re just so beautiful and wonderous, aren’t they? Not only a promise from God to never flood the whole Earth again, but an amazing piece of science too (I love how science always reveals the depth of God’s creativity, don’t you?) I thought with spring and St. Patty’s Day headed our way, now would be a great time to do some learning focused around these colorful bows!
–Rainbow ribbon craft: This was so fun and simple and came out SO cute! First, you cut out a cloud shape from cardstock. Then, give your little 6 inch strips of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple ribbon. Put some wet glue on the bottom of the cloud and ask your little to find the red ribbon. Have them glue it vertically to the bottom left of the cloud. Repeat with orange, yellow, green, blue and purple (in that order- like a real rainbow!) Then add some glue to the rest of the cloud and have your little stick pieces of cotton balls on it to make it 3D. I got this idea from 1 + 1 + 1 = 1
–Rainbow do-a-dot art: I printed a few rainbow do-a-dot pages then guided my littles regarding which colored dot to put on which part of the rainbow. My toddler went a little rouge, but that’s toddlers for ya! LoL
–Fizzy rainbow surprise: My friend Chelsea told me about this idea about a year ago and it’s been a hit ever since! Of course my littles love all things fizzy, and this one works on fine motor skills and color recognition too! First, place about a tablespoon of baking soda in each well of a muffin tin. Then put a few drops of each color of food coloring in each well so that when they fizz you’ll have all the rainbow colors (for orange I did 1 drop of red, 3 of yellow and for purple I did 2 drops of blue and 3 of red). Cover the colors with another tablespoon of baking soda to hide them. Then give your little a pipette and a small container of white vinegar. Show them how to use the pipette to make fizz and colors appear then let them explore!
–Rainbow spaghetti: Y’all. Do NOT do this without the oil because you will have one sticky and very hard to clean mess on your hands! LoL Other than that, it’s a great activity- we did it last year and I don’t remember it being hard to clean at all! So to set this up you just cook a good thick fist full of spaghetti noodles. Place a scoop of cooked noodles in a bowl and add 6+ drops of red food coloring mixed with about 1 TBSP water. Stir it up, pour out the colored water, then rinse with clear water. Add about 1 TSP of olive oil and pour the spaghetti on a sheet pan. Repeat with orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Then set the pan on a towel or blanket (or on their high chair tray) and let your little explore!
–Rainbow hop and say: I taped construction paper in the colors of the rainbow to the floor then had my little walk on each one and say its color. I wrote the color names on each piece of paper too so my preschooler could get a little sight word practice in when he did the activity (he did it hopping on one foot because preschoolers LoL). I got this idea from Growing Book by Book.
–Rainbow hunt: After doing our rainbow hop, we used the papers as a guide to do a rainbow color hunt around the house. The boys both found examples of each color in turn (first red, then orange and so on) and put them on our rainbow hop and say trail from the activity above. They had SO much fun with this!
–P is for prism: I know R is for rainbow makes much more sense this week, but my preschooler has already mastered R so we did P this week instead! Feel free to switch it up according to your little’s needs (the best part of homeschooling, am I right?!) I just drew a large P on a sheet of paper then had my little make the P with dot stickers.
–Supply/shopping list:
- do-a-dot markers
- baking soda
- vinegar
- food coloring
- muffin tin
- dot stickers
- spaghetti
- food coloring
- rainbow ribbon (one of each color- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple…or indigo and violet if you want to get specific!)
- cotton balls
littlelovesandlearning.com 
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