We needed some extra happy cheer in our playroom after a week of cold, gloomy weather. My kids had fun making a cheerful rainbow wall for their playroom while working on fine motor skills, color recognition, and counting. Oh, and cooperative projects like these were always the very first thing I’d set up for my class (and now my kids) when bickering started popping up. Working together has a great way of allowing them to work out their differences and feel like a team again.
Valentine Rainbow Wall Mural
- Gather your materials. You will need some contact paper (or craft paper with double stick tape), many sheets of all different color paper, a heart punch, and markers in every color of the rainbow.
- Start by pinning the contact paper to the wall sticky side out. I prefer contact paper because it allows kids to change where they put a heart if they don’t like their original placement. Pop the paper on with the backing still on then peel. I find it way easier than putting in on with the sticky already exposed.
- Next, punch out a whole bunch of hearts. My kids helped with some but I did most of the punching.
- Draw the rainbow with markers directly on the contact paper.
- Set up a heart station (ours was a plate and a stool) by the contact paper.
- Let them at it.My daughter liked taking her time finding the exact right spot on the rainbow wall for each heart. My son liked gathering a handful of one color and adding them on in a bunch. Clearly, they weren’t having any fun at all.
- My daughter fizzled out about halfway through, if I was making this for just toddlers I’d make a much much smaller rainbow and maybe larger hearts as well. My son and I had a race to see which colors could be filled in first. I was reminded how much I love just working on something like this with my kids. It really does make you feel more like a team and is by far the number one reason we do projects together. He counted each color to see which won and noticed that, of course, the first few colors would have more than the last few. I love it when learning like that comes so naturally in a self-directed way.
- Rainbow wall is all done. Now our gloomy winter weather can’t bring us down.
Want more great ideas for preschool activities? Check out our Build Preschool Thematic Curriculum Units!