Rainbows

Alongside shamrocks, lots of green and leprechauns, March play is often full of rainbows!

You may be lucky enough to see a real rainbow this month if you live somewhere with a climate that allows for rain in March but sadly for us up north in the Canadian winterland, we still have snow… and lots of it. So I suppose the only rainbows we will be seeing are the ones leading us to the pots of gold! 🌈✨

Oh well! I’m still kick starting a week of rainbow play with my two year old daughter, Lilly! Why? Because it’s March and rainbows make life brighter! Our main focus this week is going to be the order of the rainbow colours! The classic ROY G BIV!

But first I wanted to immerse her in some rainbow colour sensory play, which is what we did today!

I bought elbow noodles from our small town grocery store and used my acrylic paints to dye them. I simply separated the noodles into 6 ziploc bags and poured the corresponding acrylic paint over them. After a good shake and smoosh of the bag, I poured the noodles out (rather squeezed and slid them out) onto paper towels to dry. And like any good DIY, there is usually a fail. 😅

So some noodles ended up stuck to the paper towel, like dried right on. Especially my yellow ones. The yellow acrylic was extra tacky. So next time I’ll likely poor them onto wax or parchment paper to air out for the night. Either way, super simple! Once they were dried out, I separated them into the tiny square cups and voila!

Here is Lilly with the tray all set for her to explore and tinker with. Outside of the tray here (not pictures) I had some cups and extra tools as well.

She was really eager to get going! First, she wanted to dump all the noodles out into the tray. The thing about this kind of play is it can be 100% child led and as parents the best thing we can do it let them explore as they wish (within reason of course!)

She spent a good fifteen minutes just dumping them all into the tray and feeling them. She was scooping handfuls, squishing them, and pressing her hands into the middles.

After that, it became about cooking! Stirring, making soup, making lemonade in cups, scooping, pouring, and filling.

Now that I have these noodles made, we will use them all week in a variety of ways! We will use them for more sensory play of course. With simple setups like such. Too often we put too many things out for tiny hands and minds and they easily are overstimulated. My focus is the colours and their order so I want her focus on that. So the setups largely are based on the rainbow itself and the colours.

I also plan to use the letters in the word rainbow this week with her. We’ve been doing lots of letter learning because she is so eager to know about letters and reading. So I’m just following her lead! We will focusing on the letter sounds and shapes but I will also give her the name for the letter as well. One activity we will do is having her outline or fill the letter with the noodles. This is great fine motor practice but also allows her to focus on the letter shape, too! Yay for pre-writing!

Near the end of the week, I have some rainbow crafts planned that will use up most, if not all, of these noodles as her rainbow play comes to an end! Stay tuned to see what we do and how that turns out!

Thanks for reading! Happy playing!