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!