Rainbow Mobiles

Today I showed the kids how to make a rainbow using a container of water, a mirror and a flashlight. All week we've been talking about how white light is actually a mix of all the colors and when it hits a raindrop, the colors separate. So the fact that I could show them that today was a huge deal. They loved it. Then we made another rainbow craft. First I had the kids paint a small paper plate. They painted the rim red, all the way around in a circle, then orange and so on.

We had also learned that rainbows are actually a full circle, but we can only see half of it from the ground, so this was a great craft to review that.

Once dry, I cut the paper plate in half to make two rainbows. I used a sun hole punch and a raindrop stencil to make a bunch of suns and raindrops to hang from curling ribbon. I used a glue stick to attach the raindrop or sun to one end of the ribbon.

Then I stuck another one on top.

The kids glued on one sun ribbon and up to four raindrop ribbons to the back of one-half of the paper plate.

Then I stapled both halves together to make a two-sided rainbow.

Is any of this making sense? It's really not that complicated, I just feel like I'm not explaining it very well. Anyway, I hung the mobiles from the ceiling and they look so pretty!

**Linking up to Sharing Saturday, The Sunday Showcase and Rainbow Connection at Bent on Better Lunches!**

Crushed Fruit Loop Rainbows

So everywhere I look, I see Fruit Loop rainbows. They are pretty cool, and great fine-motor practice for the kids, but I wanted to do something different. I had a huge bag of generic Fruit Loops left over from our necklace craft, so I brought that back to school. On Monday I had the kids separate the cereal by color.

Then I put them into plastic bags and the kids stepped on them to crush the cereal. They loved this, of course!

I finished the crushing phase with a rolling pin. And then on Tuesday, we made rainbows with our crushed Fruit Loops.

Our art table was so colorful!

I originally planned on them painting glue onto wax paper, with a template of the rainbow underneath.

But that wasn't really working. The wax paper kept moving when they brushed the glue on, so we just painted the paper rainbows instead. I used card stock paper so it would support all the glue better.

Using slightly watered-down glue, the kids painted one row at a time and sprinkled the crushed cereal on top.

It was pretty fine, but there were a few chunks in there. It still worked well, though.

Some kids chose to follow the colors of a real rainbow, with red being on top, but others just decorated it their own unique way.

Here's what our table looked like when we were done:

You can't tell me that doesn't look like we had fun! When they were dry, I cut them out and hung them in the window. Hopefully they will catch some sun rays. Now, you could accomplish the same look with colored sand, but they wouldn't smell nearly as fruity that way!

Finger-Painted Rainbows

In the afternoons I have a high school student help out in my room. She does a project with the kids about once a week. Today's project was so fun and pretty, I asked her if I could take pictures for my blog. Her name is Ms. Jessica and she gets all the credit for this!
She found a coloring page of a rainbow and put finger paint onto paper plates. The kids could dip their fingers in paint to color their rainbow. Most smeared it on, but some made fingerprints.

The paint was so vibrant and beautiful!

I had to get in on the action and make one myself.

When it was dry, I cut it out and hung it on one of my bulletin boards!

Earlier in the day, I set out a bunch of pom poms and 6 bowls, each a different color.

The kids used a "robotic claw" to pick up each pom pom and put it in the corresponding bowl.

I got the claws many years ago from either Oriental Trading or Party City. I don't remember which one. It was great fine-motor practice and the kids really enjoyed it.

And oh, what a quiet activity that was!

Crayon Transfer Art

Before I begin, I want to point out that I finally have a Tippytoe button! I spent most of Saturday working on it, and I have to thank my 2-year-old niece, Emmelia, for being my foot model and her parents for taking a bunch of pictures of her standing on her tippy toes! I've also been moving things around a bit and am working on a new header. (I gotta take advantage of Picnik while I can!) So I hope everything will be done in the next couple of weeks. But now on to the art project.
I discovered by accident this cool way to draw. Several years ago I was writing on the back of a piece of paper that a child had colored with crayon. When I lifted up the paper, I noticed what I had written was now on a different piece of paper, and written in the color of the crayon! Maybe I was the last to know about this crayon transfer thing, but I thought it was so cool. So for art today I colored really hard with crayons on a piece of paper.

We are learning about rainbows this week, so I made a rainbow. You have to press hard when you color. I made about 8 of these, but also left some paper blank for kids to make their own. Then what you do is flip over the paper, put it on top of another piece of paper, and use a pen to write or draw. You should be drawing on the back of the rainbow, and again you need to press hard with the pen for the best results.

When you peel up the paper with the rainbow, you should see what you wrote on the other piece of paper!

(Sorry about the quality of the picture. It didn't show up that well on camera.) And the neat thing is you can use the colored paper over and over again, writing on top of what you already wrote.

You can also just scribble, and it still looks cool!

You don't need to write with a pen. Anything with a point should work, as long as you press down hard enough.

We also made art with rainbow pasta.

You can find out how I made it, or see what the kids made last year, here.

Horton Hatches the Egg

Today's Dr. Seuss book was, as you can guess by the title of my post, Horton Hatches the Egg. I love this book. The whole "an elephant's faithful one hundred percent" thing just warms my heart. For our craft, I was inspired by a bulletin board I saw at A Place Called Kindergarten. The class made up their own things that would hatch from Horton's egg. So I did the same with my class. I put our scrap paper bin on the table with some scissors and glue. The kids created little creatures and I attached them to a cracked egg.

We had some cuties!

I love the eyes peeking out!

If I Ran the Zoo

After reading If I Ran the Zoo and hearing about all the crazy Dr. Seuss animals, we did a very simple art project. I set out several different colors of paint,

and asked the kids to paint a picture of a creature that they would put in the zoo.

Talk about cute! And so fun and easy!