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One of my favorite topics to explore in preschool is rainbows. Rainbows can be easily extended to all content areas of the classroom through amazing, creative, and fun opportunities. Today, I want to share with you how we explored rainbows with our whole bodies by weaving through a rainbow…
We read one of my old favorites called, “A Rainbow of My Own” by Don Freeman. You might notice my name handwritten on the cover of the book. I don’t write all over the front of my books anymore but back in the old days, I used to loan my books out and needed to mark them so it left no doubt which books belonged to me…
In this book the illustrations show a child sliding up and down and all around a rainbow so we decided that it would be fun if we could somehow create our own fully body rainbow experience…
To make our rainbow, we cleared all the tables and furniture out of the center of our classroom and lined our classroom chairs across the room. The children weaved the colors of the rainbow out of streamers in and out of the chairs being careful to not tear the streamers as they went along…
After the children finished weaving the rainbow, they all lined up at one end of the room and I started them off in a game by inviting them to crawl underneath the rainbow from one end to the other…
The children continued to take turns going either under or stepping over or doing both as they went from one end of the rainbow to the other…
The children had to really think about what they were doing as they went through the rainbow. They had to be careful not to step on the rainbow or pull on the rainbow or it would tear. This was a wonderful exercise in strategic thinking, spacial awareness, body control, and balance…
I stood off to the side and made a few repairs to our rainbow along the way. I was glad we didn’t make our rainbow too tall or too small for this process. I must say, that it would have been easier for the children if they could have taken their shoes off but these kids were up for the challenge…
After all that concentration, balancing, and being careful not to tear up our rainbow, I decided it was time to end our experience with one last game. This time, the children were invited to go ahead and run straight through the rainbow and boy did they love that!
With the rainbow all torn down, it was time to clean up and go home. So I simply told the children if they wanted to take any of the rainbow home to grab a handful and stuff it in their bags. We had that rainbow picked up and bagged up in no time at all. I sure hope our parents enjoyed their pieces of the rainbow that came home!
Available on Amazon
Links to Grow On
Rainbows on Teach Preschool
Sorting the Rainbow by Housing a Forest
Rainbow Q-Tip Painting by Housing a Forest
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
What a colourful room! Also what a lovely natural link to working outside in that a similar set up can happen with ribbon or rope in part of the outdoor space.
Absolutely! It would be great to take outdoors!
I so adore this activity! I can’t wait to do something similar with my class when I go back to teaching after Easter. Thankyou so much for sharing.
I am assuming you knew I would comment on this awesome activity!!!! Going out to buy crepe paper now for next week. It is such a fun, creative idea to work on eye hand coordination when weaving and then motor planning, balance, body awareness and more!!! Would love to do it outside with a group of trees. This may be my favorite activity that you have posted about. Thanks!!!!!
I actually thought of you when I wrote it Margaret!! I hoped you would like it – we loved it!
What a cute idea! I just completed my rainbow unit…may use this idea as a rainy day activity.
Love all your ideas! .
Love, love, love this idea and I will be doing it on Monday with my classes! Thanks so much for sharing!
I love this idea! It made me smile that your sent a piece of the rainbow home with the kids. What a cleaver clean-up strategy! Thanks for linking to our rainbow posts as well:)
Haha – my students love to bring things home – my parents never know what might come home in those bags. One child brought home a brick last year – it was the heaviest bag ever!
You’re right Deborah, I LOVE this! I will definitely be doing something along these lines here! They boys are gonna love it!
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