Category: Activities

Ingredients
One red strawberry, sliced
Mandarin orange slices
Small pieces of yellow pineapple
Four green grapes
Six blueberries
Three purple grapes

Directions
Layer fruit in a clear plastic cup as follows: sliced strawberries, mandarin orange slices, pineapple, green grapes, blueberries, purple grapes. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Materials
Cooked spaghetti noodles
Food coloring paste (Wilton food color paste can be purchased at Walmart, Target, Michael’s)
Bowls or containers

Directions
Prepare the pasta noodles as directed on the box and then strain & rinse under cold water for several minutes. Coat the noodles with a touch of oil to prevent sticking. Divide the noodles into bowls (one bowl per desired color) and add several drops of food coloring or food coloring paste to each bowl. Mix well and allow to dry for ten to fifteen minutes. The drying helps prevent your children’s hands from getting stained from the wet food coloring. Place the noodles in a sensory bin or container, and invite your child to explore.

Materials
Craft felt in: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple
Quartet Cork Tiles
Shape buttons
Scissors

Directions
Cut felt into 2″x12″ strips. Place buttons in a small bowl. Invite your child to help lay the felt strips across the cork board in order of a rainbow.  Next encourage your child to match the same color buttons to the felt and lay them on top of the mataching felt strips. Count the buttons for each color.

Lesson Extension

1. Encourage your preschooler to make patterns with the buttons in addition to matching the colors. 
2. Sort the buttons by shape or by shape and color

Materials:
Toaster tongs
Bowl of Pompoms in a rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)
Bowls in various colors of the rainbow or a muffin tin with colored circles at the bottom of each cup 

Activity:
Using a small pair of tongs (e.g. toaster tongs), pick up one pompom at a time from the container and transfer it to the same colored bowl or a section in the muffin tin.  Review the colors with your child.  

Great fine motor practice!

Materials
Tempera paint in rainbow colors
Long white bulletin board paper
Rolling pin
Tape

Directions
Tape a long piece of white paper to the table or workspace. Place a drop of every color paint in rainbow order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) on one end of the paper. Using a rolling pin, you take one end of the rolling pin and your child takes the other end and rolls the pin through the paint and down to the other end of the paper.

Materials
Clean, damp sponge
Tempera paints (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)
Large white construction paper

Directions
Place small amounts of tempera paint in the color order of the rainbow along the length of the damp sponge.  Invert the sponge on the white paper that’s taped to the table.  Invite your child to move the sponge across the paper.  He’ll delight in what he has created – a beautiful rainbow!  Repeat the process as long as your child is interested.

Here’s our best play dough recipe:
Super Smooth Play Dough
2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
4 tsp. cream of tarter
2 cups water
2 Tbsp. baby oil
Food coloring (optional)

Combine the dry ingredients in a sauce pan. Add the water and oil (and color, if desired) and mix well. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture begins to thicken and forms a firm ball. Remove from heat and knead when cool enough. Store in an air-tight container.

To make “Rainbow Play Dough”
Divide non-colored play dough into 7 small containers.  Add a different food coloring or paste (for brilliant colors).  Mix coloring into dough.  Invite you child to explore with the various colors – roll, pound, squish, and make “snakes”.  

Working with play dough strengthens the finger muscles, which makes controlling a pencil or pen much easier.

Materials
Red tempera paint
Yellow tempera paint
Blue tempera paint
Gallon size Ziploc bag
Duct tape

Directions
Place a glob of red tempera paint, a glob of blue paint, and a glob of yellow tempera paint inside the Ziploc bag.  Zip the bag closed and reinforce with clear duct tape.  Invite your child to use his fingers to mix the three colors together.  Observe the new colors that are made as yellow mixes with blue, red mixes with yellow, and blue mixes with red.

Ingredients
Strawberry chunks
Orange sections
Pineapple
Green grapes
Blueberries or blackberries
Red or purple grapes
Mini marshmallows
Wooden skewers

Directions
Place the fruit in various bowls. Invite preschoolers to slide the fruit onto a wooden skewer in the order of a rainbow. Begin and end with a mini marshmallow so that the fruit doesn’t slide off. Enjoy the fruit kebob as a special delicious snack.

Toddlers will enjoy a rainbow in a cup snack – small bits of the same fruit layered in a plastic cup in rainbow order.