This is such a fun activity to do with your little creatives. It gets everyone out of the house and a chance to get some fresh air. It also teaches them to really observe the world around them and look for specific things in the environment. The idea is that you go for a walk and look for plants and flowers that match the colors you’ve chosen on your paper. If you don’t want to physically pick the flowers or leaves you can have your child take photos of them instead, or just point them out.
Rainbow Walk Supplies:
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- Paper – Thicker paper is best, you could even use cardboard or poster board – each child needs 1 sheet.
- Colors – Markers, crayons, pencils, highlighters, use you what you have.
- Tape – Preferably clear, but again use what you have.
Make It:
I did this while my little creatives were napping, but if your creatives are old enough have them set it up themselves.
1. CHOOSE the colors you’d like to look for on your walk, we used the 6 major colors of the rainbow, however, brown and pink or magenta would also be a great colors to add.
2. DRAW a box, circle, star, heart, or whatever shape your heart desires with each color on the left of the page.
3. WRITE out the word of the color to the right of it – remember to leave space to stick the flowers and leaves.
Explain And Name It!
Tell your little creatives you’re going to go on a Color Hunt, or a Rainbow Walk or come up with a creative name yourself.
A THOUGHT: My creatives seem to like when our activities have a theme or name to spark their imagination, they find so many ways to connect their experiences when I give them one.
Then explain how they need to look for the colors on their paper in the environment around them. Answer any questions they have then hit the road!
Here are my creatives below just before we went on our rainbow adventure:
Go For A Walk:
Here comes the fun part! Take your creatives for a walk and watch the excitement hit when they see their first color! If you’re picking the flowers and leaves, like we did, give your creatives some tape and have them tape the leaf or flower in the row of the color then continue your walk.
Mr 4 got hooked on just looking for 1 color, so I had to remind him we had other colors we could look for as well. Once he figured out the game he kept looking at the paper to figure out what color was missing then kept his eye out for it. Ms 2 wasn’t as interested in getting a color for each of the color boxes and instead focused on the colors she liked best – red and purple.
PARENT TIP: You are going on this walk too, take in a deep breath of fresh air, and look at all the beautiful colors around you, try and find something you’ve never seen before and enjoy your walk!
Come Back And Discuss Your Findings:
My creatives were actually much more engaged in this part than I thought they would be. We looked at our color or rainbow chart and I asked questions like:
- What color did we find the most of?
- What color did we find the least of?
- What color had the most flowers?
- What color had the most leaves?
- What is your favorite color?
- Why?
- How does it make you feel?
- What is your favorite flower or leaf?
- What do you like about it?
It was a quick conversation but a great one nonetheless. If your creative isn’t interested in discussing it, put it aside and maybe try again a little later on. They might want to discuss it and show their work to someone that isn’t home yet, or a visitor that comes around. If they don’t want to discuss it that’s fine too.
An Different Approach:
We recently did a different version of this activity, where we painted the inside of an egg carton to make ourself a rainbow basket. Then we added a rainbow pipe cleaner handle. We just poked a little hole in 2 sides of the side of the egg carton, thread our pipe cleaner through it and twisted it so it wouldn’t come out.
Do Tell: Leave a Comment Below
- How did your post walk conversation go?
- What was your child most interested in? The colors? The walk? Their findings? something else?
- How did you feel after the walk?
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