Download the rainbow week planning guide for simple, hands-on play and learn ideas to use at home or in your preschool classroom!
Shamrock Numbers: Print the shamrock page or create your own. Write a number on each shamrock. Hang the shamrocks around the room with tape. Say a number to look for. Have your preschooler search the shamrocks for that number. When the letter is found, your preschooler can say the number, tap the shamrock that many times, count down from the number, etc.
Color Hunt: Write the name of a color word or just color on small pieces of paper. Fold each piece of paper up so that the color or color cannot be seen. Add the folded pieces of paper to a hat or bowl. Have your preschooler pick a piece of paper and unfold it to see or read the color. After the color is identified, go look for an object that is the same color and run to find it and bring it back. Pick another folded paper and play again!
Rainbow Letters: Write the letters in the word RAINBOW in bubble or block letters on a big paper. Hang the paper on the wall. Using different colored crayons, pencils, or markers, write the same letters inside each of the big letters on the paper. Leave the paper up for a few days to come back to and keep writing letters until the letters in the word rainbow are full!
Rainbow Chalk Trace: Draw different sized rainbow arches all over the sidewalk with chalk. Use a thick paintbrush and a cup of water to trace and paint the chalk rainbow with water. Another option is to trace the chalk rainbow with another color chalk.
Rainbow Roll: Place a piece of white construction paper or cardstock in the bottom of a shallow bin or box. Place a marble in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple paint. Drop each marble on the paper in the box. Roll the marbles around and around to create your own rainbow. Consider cutting the paper into a rainbow shape after the paint is dry. Hang to display!
Roll & Color Shamrocks: Print this activity page or create your own. If creating your own, draw 6+ shamrock shapes on a paper. Add the one number 1-6 to the middle of each shamrock. Find dice for the activity. Roll one die, count the dots, and cover the shamrocks with the same number on the page. Use a button, bead, or pom pom to cover the shamrock. Keep rolling and covering until all shamrocks are covered.
Shamrock Shake: Draw shamrocks on green paper and cut them out. Write a number on each shamrock. Spread them out around the floor. Play music to dance to in between all of the shamrocks. When the music stops, quick get to a shamrock. Shake your hips the number of times that the shamrock has on it. Start the music and play again!
Paper Plate Rainbow: Cut a paper plate in half. Cut up small pieces of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple paper. Sort the colored paper into different piles. Starting with red, glue the red an arch of red papers along the top of the paper plate. Under that row, glue the orange. Then glue the yellow row, then the green, then the blue, and finally the purple at the bottom. Add a string to the top and hang the rainbow after it dries!
Rainbow Name Puzzles: Draw the outline of a rainbow and cut it out. Color it to look like a rainbow. Write the letters in your preschooler’s name across the rainbow, leaving a little space in between each letter. Cut the rainbow into puzzle pieces making sure to include one letter on each puzzle piece. Mix up the pieces and put them back together correctly creating the name!
Rainbow Cereal Sort: Use colored bowls or draw rainbow colored circles on a piece of paper. Pour a pile of Froot Loops cereal on the table. Sort the cereal pieces into the matching colored circles on the paper. After the cereal is sorted, count the totals of each color. String the cereal pieces on a string to make a necklace that is also a snack!
Walk the Rainbow: Draw a large rainbow arch with chalk or use painter’s tape on the floor. Move down the rainbow in different ways while staying on the line. Walk, tip-toe, slide, march, etc. down the line.
Nature Rainbows: Take a walk outside and look for all of the colors in a rainbow around you. Bring a clipboard and mark off each color as your find it, or bring a bag to collect the things you find in each color!
Download the rainbow theme editable planning sheet. Add learning ideas from the list below in this column or from the rainbows & shamrocks week activities!
Rainbow in the Sky Song & Game
Rainbow Colors Pocket Chart Reader
LITERACY & MATH
Rainbow Colors Emergent Reader
Rainbow Directed Easel Painting
Rainbow Alphabet Sensory Bottle