We Play – exploring rainbows

My son’s have both seemed a little dissatisfied with our usual play routine (ie. I have found it hard to keep their attention at one activity for long), so I though I would change it up for the school holidays and play around a theme for each week.  For the first week of the holidays we explored rainbows.

My eldest son is very interested in rainbows at the moment and my youngest is learning his colours, which is why I chose this topic.

We did

sorting buttons by colour

colour mixing with an eyedropper

dropping coloured water on paper towel to create rainbow flags

making rainbows with the garden hose, with a glass of water and with a crystal.  The crystal was a great favourite, after we had played with putting it in the sun to make rainbows I hung it in a sunny window and we enjoyed rainbows every morning.  The boys had great fun standing in the light and having rainbows on their hands, feet, cheeks and so on.

rainbow playdough.  We made playdough in four different colours and I then let the boys mix it together to create rainbow playdough.  Mixing the colours together (the opposite of what we normally try to do) was very motivating for my eldest – he played for a long time (much longer than normal) with this playdough. 

creating rainbow serpents (using the rainbow playdough) and reading the Aboriginal myth of the rainbow serpent

making a rainbow cake

water play (in a sunny spot) with glass beads and CDs in the water tray

 
we created a rainbow sensory tub for play inside.  I have read in many places about using indoor sensory tubs, but I have never done it before because I was sure that stuff would end up all over the floor.  But it worked really well, I put the tub on top of a mat and everything stayed on the mat, and I didn’t even have to work hard to enforce that rule.  Transferring things from the tub to the bowl with the tongs was a favourite of my toddler this week.

The posts on rainbow activities at Counting Coconuts were very helpful when I was thinking of rainbow activities for us to do.

If you are looking for something to play, come over and play at Childhood101’s We Play linkup.