- Apr 2

happy RAINBOW day! color fun with Littles!

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

We hope you and your loved ones had a memorable Easter celebration!

Near (Laurie) or far (Laura),

our little bunnies had a wonderful day, full of Alleluias and Easter goodies!

Did you know that tomorrow - April 3 - is known as

NATIONAL FIND A RAINBOW DAY!

Each year, this day challenges us all to look to the sky

and find a colorful ray of hope cast across it!

In honor of this day, we’re sharing a few colorful activities

Littles will love ANY day

(and for us, that means our grandbabies)!

RAINBOW DAY = EVERY DAY!

As usual, each requires little planning or expense

but all provide loads of fun for YOU and your Little(s)!

I, Laura, spent last week in Madison,

watching over Little L

so her mommy (who was on Spring Break)

could nest and get the new baby’s room all set…

Only six weeks to go before we welcome another Little into the fold!

❤️🧡💛💚🩵💜

We played, we read, we snuggled and we ate lots of snacks!

Blueberry bagels with cream cheese was one of Little L’s favorites!

I brought an arsenal of supplies with me,

and Little L and I had loads of fun together!

At two years old, Little L is inquisitive, determined and on the go

AND

her vocabulary is simply exploding!

She loves her colors, coloring and talking about colors!

Today we’re sharing ideas and resources for RAINBOW fun with your Little(s)!

Whenever I visit Little L and her mommy and daddy,

our favorite times of the day to work on projects

is always early morning or after nap time!

Here’s a few of our favorite activities from our time together!

Scroll through to see which ones you might like to try now or anytime!

Later in the post, I’ll share a list of the materials I brought along for our week of fun!!

This activity kept us busy early each morning when Little L woke up and climbed into bed with me!

All we needed was some colorful plastic eggs… so simple and so engaging! We stacked and wondered how high could we go? We also matched tops to bottoms and filled them with other little objects and wondered where did it go?

We spent tons of time at the kitchen counter… Little L loves her standing tower and I do, too!

For this activity, I simply added food coloring to water (filling each cup about ⅓ full), let Little L mix each with a paint brush and then provided paper towels for her to paint on!

I also showed her a cup of plain water and showed her how I “cleaned” the brush…. However she wasn’t at all interested! She LOVED painting, mixing colors, putting her brush in all the colors, over and over again!

This activity was definitely on REPEAT!!! Later in the week we started mixing colors and Little L was fascinated!

As retired kindergarten teachers, Laurie and I both know that a Little’s understanding of writing begins early! As they watch you and other grown-ups write, Littles are encouraged to pick up crayons, pencils or any other writing utensils! ANY scribbling or drawing a young Little does is writing!

I brought a piece of rainbow scrapbook paper and a container of salt with me and I used a cookie sheet from the cupboard. Little L was curious!

As shown, I put the scrapbook paper in the bottom of the pan, and then covered it with salt. That’s it! We were ready for some fun!

Little L got busy exploring… running her fingers through the salt, making handprints, erasing her creations (by gently shaking the pan with my help) and beginning again. Eventually, I offered her a pencil and it was a new level of fun!

Finally, I wrote some numbers on our writing tray and Little L had fun counting and then pointing to numbers I asked her to find!

Well, this was sure fun! I had used a similar idea in the classroom years ago and decided to adapt it for Little L! You’ll need a piece of white paper, some markers, playdough and pipe cleaners in matching colors (I used pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple).

I began by using dot markers (or a regular marker works, too) to add two circles of each rainbow color on a piece of white paper - I made sure that the dots were not near each other.

For younger Littles like Little L, I’d recommend working on one rainbow at a time! (Older Littles will be challenged if you demonstrate making one rainbow and then give them all the materials to complete the activity independently!)

Color by color, we made two balls of play dough and then Little L placed them on the two matching circles on the paper. Then she pushed one end of the pipe cleaner into one ball of play dough and the other end into the other ball. Little L was so proud of herself! 😍

It will get more challenging as your Little builds rainbow after rainbow! Can you see how Little L was concentrating… Oh my goodness, I love that tongue action!

I’ve already mentioned how much Little L LOVES painting and dot paints are her favorite! At this stage, she honestly loves screwing the covers on and off the different colors as much as she enjoys the process of painting! And, this Grand loves how easy they are to use and how the mess is mostly self contained!

We made a GIANT rainbow!

Again, so that the experience would be successful for Little L as a two year old, I added one line of color at a time (with a marker) and then she used the matching dot paint to dot away, covering each line with dot after dot!

To make the experience more age appropriate for older Littles, draw all 6 rainbow colored lines on the white paper ahead of time and give them all the colors! Better, still, give them the markers to create their own rainbow!

NOTE: Little L had used dot markers often by the time she did this project! Be sure to give Littles time to exploe materials on their own before attempting any directed project! This is known as free exploration and is an important part of play!

Froot Loops are such a delicious way to sort colors! In this recent post (St. Patrick’s Day - Activity 9), we shared a few rainbow activities, including 3 ways to use this yummy cereal with Littles!

I still had a few pouches of snack-size Froot Loops left so I brought them with me during last week’s visit and we made a rainbow necklace! Some yarn, the Froot Loops and a plastic embroidery needle did the job! (You could also add some masking tape to the end of your yarn/string to make a needle, as well.)

Little L had a color sorting sheet (thanks to her daycare provider) so we began by sorting the Froot Loops by color! Then she threaded away! Again, this is great fine motor practice! Older Littles will have fun creating their own patterns (as well as a longer necklace), too!

Somebody thoroughly enjoyed this project… Can you tell?

Do you have any plastic eggs leftover after Easter? If so, this is a wonderful way for Littles to match colors!

Begin by making a game board, putting two dots of each rainbow color on a large sheet of white paper. (Use colors to match the plastic egg colors you have.) Then let your Little match colors by placing a plastic egg half over each matching color! If your Little is like Little L, he/she will want to play this game over and over again!

We revisited this game many times during my visit! To make it more interesting as the week went on we tried two extensions - (1) I would say “ready, set, go” and Little L would add the plastic egg halves as fast as she could and (2) I would hide the plastic egg halves and as Little L found them she’d add them to the board!