Home-Based Preschool: R is For Rainbow

I’m back to tell about another fun day at our home-based preschool! It was my turn again this week and I ended up with the letter R. On Monday we did “R is for Rolling”, which seems random, but it worked out great. We rolled ourselves, we rolled balls, we tried rolling different objects down a ramp, we counted wheels on vehicles, we decided what vehicles roll and what don’t, we ate rolling snacks, we rolled our play-doh- it was a blast!

For today’s lesson I went with RAINBOWS!

Can you tell Little Boo is having fun? Behind her is the rainbow we “built” all together at the start of our lesson. I gave each child a piece of the rainbow and we stacked them on top of each other to create our rainbow. I had them sing the colors of the rainbow song from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I was originally going to use felt for the rainbow, but I didn’t have all the colors I needed. Construction paper and tape work just as well!

After we introduced our rainbow theme we had snack time- rainbow goldfish crackers. While everyone was at the table we did our craft- rainbow Froot Loop necklaces. Little Boo is wearing hers in the photo above. I just twisted the ends of two pipe cleaners together to make a longer one, then I had the kids string Froot Loops on them. 

After our craft we did some work stations.

Here are two of the girls trying out our “Rainbow in My Room”- a little gadget that makes a rainbow on your wall. My older daughter got it for Christmas from her grandma. 

I had an awesome friend help me out today by bringing some Montessori-type items so we could make work stations. She has studied some of the Montessori teaching methods and she taught me quite a bit. Here are two of the boys working on a tray with multicolored transparent chips. I had drawn a rainbow and written letters on it, and I instructed them to use the chips to cover the R’s. At this point I think they were just having fun with it, because the chips had a metal ring around the outside and you could use this great magnetic wand to pick them all up. They liked that part. But several of the kids (including these guys) did very well finding the R’s on the page.

Here’s another little friend working with marbles on a suction-cup dinosaur. She is practicing her fine motor skills by picking up each marble and placing it into a suction cup. 

Little Boo was having some fun drawing in the salt tray. Just put some salt in a cake pan and let them practice writing their letters in it, or drawing shapes.

You can’t really see them, but this little friend is using tongs to move little rubbery pom pom balls from a bowl into a plastic paint palette. 

Ta-da! She’s very proud.

We also had a work station for pouring rocks (another great R word), rolling (R!) a bamboo mat, and a large letter R which we had drawn lines on to make it look like a road so the kids could drive toy cars on it.

Here’s my friend Rosanne reading the kids a story in Spanish about Rhinoceroses. It’s a giant book, and the kids really liked it. We also read “I Am a Rainbow”, “Planting a Rainbow”, and “Dizzy Duck and Silly Goose Hunt for a Rainbow”. I also had “The Rainbow Fish” and “Elmer’s Rainbow” but we didn’t quite get to them.

We had a rainbow dance party where we played some songs about rainbows and I gave each child a rainbow streamer to hold and use in their dancing. I just made a ring out of a pipe cleaner and tied some fuzzy rainbow yarn onto it. 

So fun!

After our dance party the kids expended some more energy playing outside while I got our rainbow lunch ready.

And here was our rainbow lunch: hot dogs, cheese, pineapple chunks, honeydew melon, blueberry yogurt, and of course marshmallow clouds.

Everyone is eating their rainbows. YUM!

I think Little Boo liked her rainbow preschool day!

Do you have any more fun rainbow-themed preschool ideas?