If you didn’t hear, Texas was closed last week! Oh man, what a ride. We were fortunate to have power and water the entire time and haven’t had any issues since. By Saturday morning of that week it was nearly 80 degrees with not a single speck of snow on the ground. Truly wild.
I did have to work Wednesday through Friday so I prepped my car with all the toys from my nanny closest that we haven’t played with in a long time! Being cooped up inside really tested my nanny skills, good thing I’m up for the challenge. While I was pulling out my closest I noticed that a ton of my tools are rainbow colored or themed. It hit me that a rainbow theme would be perfect to kick off spring. My 3 year old friend, E, is currently obsessed with all things rainbow and unicorn so all these ideas will be feeding right into her interests!
Let’s dive in!
The first few activities are all DIY’s which are really easy to recreate!
First up is a classic sensory bin filler, Rainbow rice! I added some unicorn erasers, scoops, and bowls. Not pictured are the sparkle stars I threw in once I took this to work. Rice is such a great cheap filler that will last forever.
To make this:
Add two cups of rice to a ziplock bag, pour a 1/2 tsp of vinegar or rubbing alcohol to the bag, add a few drops of food coloring, close bag and shake to mix color. Pour it all onto a cookie tray to dry overnight. Repeat with how many colors you would like!
Here is another fun fine motor DIY. I shared a Reel of how to make this on my instagram (rachrunstx)
You’ll need:
Cookie tray, rainbow colored construction paper, tape, salt, small paint brush
Grab some paper in rainbow order, stack them so you can see each color, and tape together. Lay the stack on your tray or cookie sheet, pour salt on top to cover, give your child a paintbrush to explore. Your child could practice making lines, brush to look for a color, write letters or numbers, or just practice fine motor skills!
One more DIY project! This one takes a little longer to put together with all the pieces you’ll need to glue. I cut down some paper towel and TP tubes to make smaller circles. After I placed the circles into a rainbow shape, the white circles are supposed to be clouds, I glued them down to a larger piece of cardboard. I will have my kids fill this with the colored rice or pom poms. A fun fine motor independent exploration!
A DIY is a simple color hunt will be so fun! We’ll use this around the house or outside on our walk. My friends will check the box once we find the color. You could laminate this for multiple uses. I’ve also seen it drawn on the outside of a paper bag so your child could collect the object he finds!
Using the leftover paper from the salt tray and some quickly colored clothespins this basket will be great for color recognition and fine motor!
Along the same lines as the clothespins, this button match will be wonderful for color recognition.
I love these adorable peg dolls! I have no idea why, they just look so cute to me. I painted the dolls and candle holders with tempera paint. They’ve held up pretty well. My dad did have to bore out the top of the candle holders a little so the dolls could fit inside, which is why the orange looks a little janky. Now that I’m looking at this picture, I have no idea where the purple went!
Now I’m going to share a few ideas that require a few more tools, but I’ll give you some adjustments you can make if you’re not in the market to purchase anything new.
A few months ago I hit the Target dollar spot jackpot! This puzzle was one of those finds. There are tons of color match puzzles on the market, find one you like because your child will probably use it for a long time!
First off, you don’t need a peg board but I highly suggest purchasing one at some point because they are super useful and beneficial for fine motor and math skills.
There’s a lot of things going on in this activity. One being the placing pegs in the holes, the second is pulling hair ties over the pegs, the third is color matching if desired! Your child will be working fine motor and visual discrimination skills all at once.
If you don’t have a peg board, you could easily pull hair ties over jars or cans, even old paper towel tubes would work. Cover the cans with colored paper to make it a color match activity!
Fancy math tools are not necessary in a home setting but they do come in handy if you want a quick set up. Throw the dinos in a basket and have your child sort them! Roll a dice and have your child count out how many bugs match. You can also sort bugs by color and type. The unifix cubes are great building tools along with their fine motor capabilities. Bug and dinosaur counters have been a staple in early childhood classrooms forever! Teachers use them for counting, matching, graphing, and sorting.
As always, don’t forget to connect with me on Instagram or at theteachingnannyblog@gmail.com I love to hear how these ideas have inspired your play!
The Teaching Nanny 
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