In my previous post, I shared with you our rainbow weaving. Along with our rainbow weaving, we also explored a simple but extremely beautiful abstract rainbow painting process…
To prepare for our rainbow painting activity, Mrs. Courtney cut up an oatmeal box into half circles. The oatmeal box is a nice sturdy cardboard that is already shaped round and holds it’s rounded shape when cut apart. So Mrs. Courtney just cut across the box to make circles then in half again to make half circles…
Every color of the rainbow was set out on the table along with our rainbow strips of cardboard…
The children used the rainbow strips to create their own rainbows by pressing the edge of the cardboard strips into the paint then making a print on their paper…
Every rainbow took on it’s own unique style based on what was most interesting to each child…
This was so simple to set up that when the children asked if they could make another rainbow the next day, we set it all out again using the same strips from the day before…
I love the abstract look of our rainbows – they are simply beautiful!
Available on Amazon
Links to Grow on
This idea was 100% inspired by Paper Tube Stamping from Makes and Takes
Paper Plate Rainbow from Blog Me Mom
Paper Strip Rainbows from Teach Preschool
This isn’t really related to today’s subject, but I noticed, again, that your children use Sharpies for their writing. Can you tell me why you’ve chosen them?
Hi Janet,
My students choose them for themselves actually. We have out crayons, markers pencils, and other writing tools on the shelves and all of great quality but we also have one basket of sharpies that stay on the teacher cabinet. My students will seek out the sharpies before choosing to write with the other tools – they tend to choose the pencils second. In their journals, we stick with crayons or pencils but for other processes, we let them decide what they want to write with. As long as they take care of them, use them properly (which we talk about), they are given the opportunity to choose them.
By the way, you will notice that the children primarily use them for writing their name. When drawing (unless drawing on a material where sharpies just work better), coloring, designing, creating, or doing something a little more involved, we encourage the use of our other writing tools.
How fun! I LOVE the idea for the oatmeal container, much larger rainbows, double the fun! And thanks for the link love 🙂
I was hoping you didn’t mind our variation but in planning, we kept in mind your beautiful rainbows and just couldn’t resist!
Love all the rainbow ideas. Leprechauns ” invaded”our room Thursday night and my little friends were on the hunt on Friday! We had talked about setting traps but didn’t get around to it. After church on Friday, all of my students went to work making leprechaun traps. They had some very good examples and all of them were different. It is so awesome to see their creativity at work!
My 3 year old class made these rainbows today–they came out so lovely! The kids enjoyed printing with the oatmeal box “arches”and they came up with so many beautiful patterns. Thank you for sharing such wonderful ideas !
Yay! One of my favorite activities!!