A Rainbow of My Own

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All of our activities this week were inspired by the wonderful children's book, A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman. 

Gathering Activity: Rainbow Colored Spaghetti Noodles

I loved these rainbow colored spaghetti noodles when I saw them on The Imagination Tree blog.  I knew they had to be part of our rainbow day.  We followed the directions found on their blog to make them.  

Our kids had a great time with this wonderful sensory activity.  They were extremely engaged with the rainbow colored spaghetti noodles.  They squished, smelled, and yes, even tasted these noodles.  I didn't notice this on the Imagination Tree's blog, but that was the first thing our little ones did, stick it immediately in their mouths. (Thank goodness they are nontoxic).  Even our little ones who are pretty hesitant with most sensory activities got into the messy fun!  Our hands were VERY oily afterwards, but that was easily remedied with soap and water.

Circle Time

 

We read the Don Freeman classic,  A Rainbow of My Own.  (If you are unfamiliar with this author, he also wrote Corduroy).  The story is sweet and simple.  A child sees a rainbow and chases it, until it disappears.  Then the child imagines that the rainbow returns to play and belongs just to the child.  Each picture depicts delightful scenes of pretend as the child plays with the rainbow.  When the child returns home, a rainbow is on the wall of the child's bedroom, made from the sun shining through a fish bowl.  I love how the story never really indicates a specific gender, leaving the readers to picture themselves as the main character. 

We sang this cute song by Jean Warren. 
 

GREAT BIG RAINBOW
Sung to: "I'm a Little Teapot"
There's a great, big rainbow
In the sky,
With pretty colors
Way up high.
When it starts to rain
And the sun comes out-
A beautiful rainbow
Will pop out!

Snack: Rainbow Fruit Pizza
 

One of the moms made a large fruit pizza shaped like an arc using sugar cookie dough as the crust.  She topped it with cream cheese frosting and then fruit.  We  cut each child a slice so that they could  all have a rainbow of their own.

Art: Rainbow Art Collages
 

We were inspired by the lovely collages on katherine marie's blog.  

We made our own by providing the children with pre-drawn and colored rainbows on half sheets of poster board and pre-color-sorted collage supplies.  (My 4 and 7 year old sons colored the rainbows for us before class).

 The children color matched an assortment of stickers, felt, paper, feathers, pom poms, ribbon, and foam pieces onto the rainbow.  

The kids enjoyed this project and really got the concept of matching the colors.  However, the size of the rainbow was too large to hold about half of our kids' interest, and we had a couple of moms left alone to finish the project at the end. I would recommend  one-fourth of a poster board if I was to repeat the activity.

Activities:Rainbow Streamers and Bubbles
 

1-Rainbow Streamers: We danced outside with Rainbow Wind Streamers that we made by following the directions on one of my very favorite blogs, Toddler Approved.  I love that these used surveying tape instead of paper streamers.  They were durable and we can use them again and again!

 

2-Rainbow Bubbles: We blew bubbles outside and looked for rainbows in the bubbles.  It was a beautiful day where we lived.  Perfect for creating memories with our little ones.
 

You can sing this cute Rainbows in My Bubbles song found here on Preschool Music Express. 

RAINBOWS IN MY BUBBLES
Tune:  “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain”
I’ve got rainbows in my bubbles, yes I do.
I’ve got rainbows in my bubbles, yes I so.
When I blow up towards the sun,
They have rainbows, every one.
I’ve got rainbows in my bubbles, yes I do.
                                               Jean Warren

The Day it Rained Hearts

*****The children each brought Valentine cards to share with our friends. 


Gathering: Make Bags for Our Valentine Cards

I wanted to make our Valentine mailbags with umbrellas and hearts to go with our book.  

  

Materials needed: White paper bags, small heart stickers, 3 cupcake liners per child (we used cute Valentine themed ones), 3 pipe cleaner halves, glue,crayons, letter stickers for names 

1-Glue cupcake liners upside down to look like umbrellas.  Bend the pipe cleaner to look like an umbrella handle and add it to the bag.  
2-Place heart stickers on the bag to look like it is raining hearts.
3-Add letter stickers for their names.  

4-Place valentine cards inside for our friends.

Circle Time: The Day it Rained Hearts

We read The Day it Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond.  It is a very sweet and simple story of a little girl who makes Valentines for all of her animal friends one day that it rained hearts from the sky.


 We sang a sweet song together after our story.  My little girl has sang it all week long. 


I wrote one letter on each of five hearts, and took one away each time we sang the song. 

Heart-o (tune of bingo) Instead of clapping, we blew kisses, each time we took a heart letter away.

“There is a word and it means love and heart is it’s name-o.
H-e-a-r-t.  H-e-a-r-t. H-e-a-r-t and Heart is it’s name-o.”


Art: Heart Garland

In the story the little girl strings together 7 hearts to make one of the valentines.  

Materials Needed: 7 large hearts per child (hole punch the hearts on each side to make for easy threading), yarn or ribbon, glue, crayons, sequins, stickers, any other collage materials you might want to bring

1-It was easiest to FIRST let the children thread their hearts together.
2-Decorate the hearts with collage materials provided to make your own garland. 

 

Snack: Valentine Popcorn, Strawberries, and Pink Milk

We enjoyed yummy Valentine Popcorn we made from this recipe at Nest of Posies. It is VERY ADDICTIVE!

We rounded out the treat with strawberries and pink milk!

Heart Activities

1-Conversation heart scoop “relay”

We had two buckets set up across the room from each other.  One child begins at the starting line next to a bucket filled with conversation hearts. Give each child a measuring cup scoop (Target had heart shaped ones in the dollar section).  The children carried the filled cup and emptied it into the bucket across the room.  Then they returned the cup to the next friend waiting.   

Helpful hint:
Don’t make it a competitive game.  But do supply enough materials for two or three “teams.”  (6 buckets, 3 scoops) That will give each of the children several turns, but still an opportunity to practice taking turns while their partner goes.

2- Let It Rain Hearts

We used paper and foam hearts to rain down on our little ones.
This was a fun idea inspired by Totally Tots!
(Idea based on activity found here).

3-Stacking Conversation Hearts

Give the children large conversation hearts and allow them to try and make the tallest tower they can before it falls.  They loved this game and kept trying over and over again. 

The Puddle by David McPhail

 Gathering Activity:  Umbrella Art 

Materials Needed: Cupcake liners, pipe cleaners, construction paper, Do-A-Dot markers, sticky foam cut into the shape of raindrops

We made these adorable umbrellas inspired by this craft on No Time for Flash Cards.  You can click on the link for detailed directions.

 The only modification we made was to cut raindrops from sticky foam we happened to have available.  The children were able to peel off the back and stick them on directly.  

Circle Time: The Puddle by David McPhail

The Puddle is a delightfully written and illustrated story about a child who goes out to play with a sailboat in the rain.  The child's sailboat sails out of reach when a frog asks to sail in the boat Then a turtle backstrokes by while enjoying afternoon tea, a crocodile rescues (and chomps) the boat, a pig dives into the puddle and splashes the child, and an elephant drinks the puddle.   In the end, the child comes home and enjoys a warm bath and sailing the boat in the tub.  Another fun thing about this book is that the author purposely allows the reader to decide whether the main character is male or female.  


After reading the story, we sang some favorite songs.

  

A Sailor Went to Sea

A sailor went to sea sea sea.
To see what he could see see see.
But all that he could see see see
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea.

This first one was our favorite.  We taught the children how to do the hand motions.  You slap your knees, clap your hands, and then clap the hands of your  partner three times.  We sang this one several times.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider
The itsy bitsy spider
Climbed up the waterspout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out.
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
So the itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the spout again!

Rain Is Falling

Rain is falling all around,

 on the housetops on the ground,

 rain is falling on my nose,

on my head and hands and toes.

Snack: Apple Sailboats

Materials Needed: Apple slices, cheese cut into triangles, toothpicks 

We allowed the children to assemble these themselves.  They really enjoyed making and eating these. 

Art Activity: Sailboats 

Materials Needed: Plastic cup with top half  cut off, with duct tape around the top of the bottom half of the cup (keeps the jagged edges from cutting the children), straw, triangle shaped paper with two holes to thread straw through, modeling clay 

Directions: Allow the children to decorate the sail themselves.  Help them thread the sail onto the straw and stick into the modeling clay that is placed in the center of the bottom of the cup.  The lower the sail, the better balanced your boat will be.  

 Activity: Sailing Sailboats

We sailed our boats in our little swimming pool.  It was a fun use for our pool that usually doesn't get pulled out until the summer.  The children wore raincoats and rain boots like the child in the story.  It also helped ensure that they stayed dry.

  We played outside for quite a while.  By the time we finished, the 3 girls' boats were exactly as they had been at the beginning.  The 3 boys' boats had been taken apart and were now cups that they were using to scoop and pour and splash with. 

Puddle Jumping

We cut out puddles from blue construction paper and allowed the children to jump over them.  A fun song to play along while they moved would be Greg and Steve's "Robin in the Rain."  Of course I didn't think of this until they were jumping.  I will pull the puddles back out later this week and play again using that song.