I have a tendency to over-think or worry about what I plan for the children to do! Last week I decided that we should try adding rainbow bottles to our activity boxes…
To make the colorful rainbow bottles, we simply filled the bottles about 3/4 of the way with water, added about 1/2 cup of cooking oil, and then added a few drops of food color. Then we used hot glue to permanently attach the lids so they wouldn’t open up while the children played….
The problem for me was that I worried that just setting out these bottles would only be of short interest to the children…
I kept thinking I should add something to go along with the bottles – something more challenging or engaging like a game mat…
But I didn’t have time so we just set them out with nothing else. When I observed the children this week, I realized that just the novelty of them captured their interest. The older children kept rearranging the colors and some of them came back over and over to put them back in “rainbow order”…
But the age group that I got the biggest kick out of was watching the threes….
Their teacher said, “I thought the children would get bored but I have set them out every day and there is aways someone here playing with the bottles.”
The threes like to trade them…
They like to see how many they can hold at one time…
The like to shake and roll them…
And they like to organize them…
While playing with the bottles – the children share with each other, talk with each other, copy each other, and they are very careful with the bottles!
Some day, I am going to learn to not underestimate how much children love to play with and manipulate materials like this and all I need to do is just get out of the way…
Check out these beautiful photos of preschool rainbow ideas from Katherine Marie Photography!
Linky Up Your Preschool Rainbow Activity
I have seen some amazing rainbow activities that I want to share so I am also going to open this up as a Preschool Rainbow linky just because there are so many rainbow activities you all have posted that I just love. I hope you will linky up! Â Oh and by the way – if you added a linky to my Dr. Suess post – I don’t know what happened to the photos but I fixed them all now:)
Rainbow books available on Amazon…