baking rainbow {cup}cakes with kids

One of our favorite activities from rainbow week was baking rainbow cakes! The children love cooking and/or preparing food in our classroom so I try to arrange something a couple times a month. Baking rainbow cakes came about after a lively reading of Bunny Cakes. The children decided we should bake a cake, knowing the following week would be our rainbow week, I asked if they would like to bake rainbow cakes. The cheer was affirmative and so I planned.

For this activity we used a box mix. The children all sat together at our main activity table while we discussed the ingredients used in cake-making. Some of the children remembered that Ruby used milk and eggs to bake Grandma's cake and so I showed them the eggs I had brought and talked about the niftiness that is a cake mix. We sat at our tables and reviewed ingredients before I began mixing. The children took turns passing the bowl of dry cake mix around for a whiff. They were quite excited.

After I had mixed the batter up, we portioned out the batter into some white classroom bowls purchased from the discount store. I prefer to use real dishes as opposed to disposable when we can. The children took turns picking out one of the colors from the rainbow, with the last two colors being happily claimed by the last two children (we had six that day so it worked out perfectly!) They quickly got to mixing. I forgot our wooden spoons so plastic it was, drats!

When we bake in our classroom we use our Baby Cakes cupcake maker. I found it at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for $5 after a big sale and some coupon magic! The maker does not heat up until you plug it in and there are eight mini cupcake wells inside. We have used it for cupcakes, muffins, and pie. I love it! The children waited patiently for their turn to drip, drip, drip a rainbow of batter into their cup. I made a quick diagram of whose cupcake was whose on a piece of scratch paper.

After 10 minutes the cupcakes were done! The cupcake maker does get hot so make sure there is an adult near it at all times or that it is tucked away from anxious little hands. The first batch of cupakes were gently scooped out with a silicone spatula and placed on a place in the order they baked and set aside to cool. The remaining batter (there was a lot of batter, I wonder if I could hack the recipe on the box with one scoop of cake mix) was scooped in by the teachers and enjoyed after class.

 
The children were presented with their very own mini cupcake on a plate with a dollop of whipped cream and a smattering of sprinkles. Had we had more time, we would have made the whipped cream in class but we were pushing it.

The verdict? Delicious!

rainbow week

rainbow discovery bottles

fine motor rainbow activity

magnetic pompoms on the rainbow tray

pastel rainbow beans

class made xylophone

rainbow sticky easel

sorting mat and shape buttons

making a rainbow bookcase

 

diy fine motor rainbows

 I know. Making a froot loop necklace in preschool is hardly revolutionary or original but it does have its moments. Tasty, sugary moments of course. I set this up as a side project to our rainbow study so that the children could work those fine motor skills and practice their color recognition.

 While the children were playing in the classroom, I hopped on over to our kitchen/craft area and set up. Each kiddo got a white tray (I love these trays), one of our small colored bowls full of froot loops, and a length of yarn that matched the bowl (I tied a loop of cereal to the end of each length of yarn to act as an anchor to keep the other loops from slipping off). The children got to choose where they sat and needed no introduction other than affirmation that it was okay to eat the cereal.

We talked about the colors in our bowls, what colors we would use in a rainbow and what colors we were using in our rainbows. All of the children decided to take their necklaces home rather than eat them up. It was a lot of fun to see their delight and wonder and to hear their discussion as they laced away.

rainbow percussion play

Can you tell I like a rainbow? We made a classroom xylophone using a variety of coffee/frap bottles, liquid watercolor, and water. Our books were A Rainbow of My Own and The Listening Walk. We did this project for both books and again when the children wanted to. We talked a lot about order and sequencing as we arranged the bottles in and out of rainbow order and discussed the steps for making our xylophone. I talked to the children about sounds, vibrations, music, and percussion. There had been a lot of discussion about all of those things in our classroom during the week and creating our own xylophone tied it all together.

We began with glass bottles (not a bad excuse for drinking fancy bottled coffee drinks) that had just a little bit of liquid watercolor in them. One of the kiddos was really excited to see all of the colors of the rainbow. They had even made sure the bottles were in rainbow order before we began.

I introduced the funnel as a tool for pouring liquid into the bottles without spilling. The kiddos use funnels a lot in water play and sensory play. This was the first time they were using it as a kitchen tool and they were very excited!

The children took turns pouring water into the bottles. All of them oohed and aahed over the brightly colored water.

 We worked in a small group to give everyone a chance to pour and talk about what they were doing.

I was surprised and delighted that the children did not wish to pour equal amounts of water into the bottles. There was some ownership over who poured the water in each bottle so later as they played, they would refer to the red bottle as theirs or the blue bottle as his...etc.

Aren't they pretty all lined up? The next day when we did the project again, the children in the next group poured equal amounts of water into each bottle. They worked very carefully and eyeballed their amounts. One of the children had an a-ha moment and went off in search of a measuring cup. It was super cool.

They had so much fun playing their new classroom instrument. Variety of sound was magical to them. The second rainbow xylophone made with equal amounts was also just as fun to play. One of the children noticed the sounds were not that different and another a-ha moment happened when he told the other children they need to change the water.

See? So much music and fun. Here are two of the kiddos playing their Jazz music. We play a lot of jazz in the classroom though their favorite is rock n roll. I have a video to post also. I just need to figure out how to make the file smaller. Stay tuned!

wrap a rainbow

Here is another fun project from our spring week of rainbows...yarn wrapped-rainbows!The set up was a bowl full of balls of yarn, scissors, and pre-notched up pieces of cardboard cut from a box we had hanging around the classroom.

 

I teach 3s and my 3s are on the younger side so this project was one that many of them needed a little guidance with. Some of the children only needed a little help showing them what the notched were for while others found that holding the cardboard and wrapping was a bit too twisty for their little hands so I held the cardboard for them as they cut their yarn, slipped it into a notch, and wrapped itaround and around and around. They were so proud of their finished rainbows!

The children used all sorts of fine and even some large motor skills for this project. Fine motor for scissors work, holding the cardboard and wrapping the yarn near the end of their strands; large motor for the beginning wrapping as the kiddos may have cut very long lengths of yarn so the wrapping became a whole-body event. They used sequencing/ordering skills along with color recognition as they wrapped their yarn in rainbow order. Pretty cool!

foil tape resist rainbows

This was a last minute project, one of those where you fly by the seat of your pants. I wanted to set up a rainbow painting station but we had already had our dot markers at the easel and our rainbow paints at the easel. I had a short stack of cardboard left over from another project and some foil left over from our painting with cars activity and thought to wrap the foil around the cardboard and see what the kiddos come up with.

 

After giving each paint cup a hefty dose of dish soap, I spied our roll of painter's tape and thought "Oh, yes, the kiddos will love this". My class kids adore tape, They love to wrap things and stick tape onto paper both for fun and for painting over so the set up was had.

We did this in both of our classes of three year olds and the variety of fun was lovely. Most of the children taped up their foil all willy-nilly and then painted all over it. There were quite a few brown paintings to be had as well and there were a few lovely rainbows all arced up and painted in rainbow order. I love how each kiddo takes a process and makes it their own. I wish I had photos of the finished. I'm pretty sure I do but I can't find them. Once I do though, I will post them. they were so happy! 

**Don't forget to add dish soap to the paint so it sticks. We used painter's tape and tempera colors. The children loved peeling off the tape almost as much as putting it on.

fun with rainbow dough

If you haven't noticed by now I am a bit of a rainbow freak. I love using the rainbow in the classroom to teach color, sequencing, and pre-reading skills. If you think about it, understanding the order of the colors in the rainbow from left to right is a precursor to reading. Plus, in nature and science, the order of the colors is always the same.

 I used my favorite stove top dough recipe (which you can find here) and made a single batch for each color. I used liquid watercolor (so much happy color to be had) to tint the dough. For set up, I placed a small ball (about half a batch of each so that each class could experience the colors separately before they got mixed to that glorious shade of brown that dough tends to get when all the colors are mixed) of each color on top of a sheet of blue construction paper that had been laminated with clear contact paper. I placed the dough colors in rainbow order.

 

Next to the happy dough, I set out a collection of dyed craft sticks and cubes. The craft sticks and cubes were purchased at a few different craft stores. I had been collecting them gradually just for this project (inspiration came from fun at home with kids) as wood pieces tend to be a bit on the pricier side of things. Thank goodness for sales!

The children oohed and aahed when they saw the happy set up. Weirdly, the colors remained unmixed for two weeks. Mostly they stacked the colors on top of each other then jabbed various sticks and cubes into the mess. A few of the children color sorted all the bits and created ice cream cones and rainbows even. We actually used this dough all the way through the end of the year though by that time it was a lovely shade of rust. The craft sticks and cubes visited many areas of the classroom as lollipops, tickets, money, magic cubes, and more. The children had a lot of fun playing with our rainbow dough!

diy: rainbow clothespins

For our week of rainbow I dyed up a batch of wooden clothespins using the same method I use for dying pasta.

While I was at it, I dyed large craft sticks and small wooden cubes as well. These are not colorfast and do bleed onto paper and play dough when wet (maybe they would be colorfast if I had added rubbing alcohol). But that's okay, I think that only adds to their charm. 

 

 I set the rainbow pins up on one of my favorite trays along with a wooden storage box made of a thin veneer. I hoped the children would figure out that they could balance the clothespin on the side of the box and they did! I made multiples of each color so that they could sort or arrange as they wished.

Some of the children noticed that all of the colors of the rainbow were represented. Others counted out how many pins there were. The clothespins migrated all over the classroom but mostly they were balanced on the edge of the box. Fun!

diy dyed pasta

There are oodles of diys for coloring rice and pasta put there (hello, Pinterest). I suppose mine is no more different than anyone other but I'm going to share it with you anyway. I use this method for dying rice, beans, pasta of all shapes and size, and even wood pieces such as wee blocks and/or clothes pins. It's really easy!

This is a small batch of dyed pasta as I only had one box. I wanted to use this pasta so the kiddos could string the pieces onto pipe cleaners during our week of rainbow. I think I did all the colors in the rainbow but I can't remember. I also have to tell ya that dying pasta purple is really difficult and you will most likely get something more akin to bergundy. So here is what I did. I scooped a cup of noodles into each bowl. Just a cup. A little goes a long way. Just one cup for each color if you are using a single pckage. Oh and this pasta is called ditalini and if you buy it in a box with that label you will be sorely over paying. It can also be found in a box labeled macaroni salad pasta and this my friends will be 2-3 dollars less. But that just may be my market...

Place your one cup of dry pasta into a resealable bag or container. Add a squirt or two of liquid watercolor or food color (you can even use watered down acrylic paint), seal the bag and shake it up. Use your fingers to smoosh the paint around from the outside of the bag. For color stay noodles, you can add a tablespoon of vinegar or rubbing alcohol. The rubbing alcohol will help the noodles dry more quickly. You do not need to add either this is optional. If I remember I do, if I don't, I do not worry about it.

Spill the damp and now colorful noodles onto a cookie sheet that has been lined with wax or parchment paper until dry. It takes about 15 minutes to dry. Repeat for each color you wish.

Ah, yes. I did do each color of the rainbow and I think I did use watered down acrylic for the purple. It looks pretty vibrant there. I popped all the happy colorful noodles into a small shallow container along with a couple of wooden spoons. Next to the container I set out our happy rainbow bowls (best $3 thrift find!) and a white acrylic tray and waited for the fun to begin.

There was maybe a moment or two of color sorting going on but the bigger pleasure for the children was running their hands through the hole happy mess along with scooping, pouring, and dumping. Success!

sponge painted rainbows

We had a week of rainbows back in spring and I found this project all over pinterest. We lightened up the colors a bit and set up a table with all the materials needed. I did one demo and then let the kiddos have fun with it however they chose.

Once their printed ranbows were dry, we trimmed the white paper around the color and mounted them on colored construction paper. One of our kiddos cut his into a cloud shape and another wanted two rainbows on their paper. They chose all different colors of the rainbow for their back ground papers. I wish I had pictures of them! I thought I had...drats!