A great way to explore rainbows and build critical thinking skills in preschool!

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.

Introducing a Story

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.

Making our Rainbow

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.

Taking Turns

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.

Building Critical Thinking

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.

Having Fun!

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. We had that rainbow picked up and bagged up in no time at all. The children even took a few pieces of the rainbow home to share all about our experience today!

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