Rainbow Activities for Colorful Learning and Play

Over 25 rainbow activities the kids are sure to love. They’d be great additions to your St. Patrick’s Day activities for preschoolers. But there are also some colorful science, math, literacy, and art ideas here that can be used throughout the year!

Related: Spring Activities for Preschoolers

I’m a big fan of colors and incorporating rainbows into learning invitations. Children are often enamored with rainbows, and learning colors is a preschool right of passage.

The rainbow ideas below engage the kids, let them explore colors, and delve into a variety of additional learning skills.

I, personally, think that rainbows are fun any time of the year! Others prefer to bring out the rainbows in the spring or around St. Patrick’s Day. No matter your preference, these ideas are sure to inspire a ton of fun and learning.

Rainbow Activities

To make things easier to find, I’ve broken up the colorful activities into a few different categories. If you’re looking for something specific, you can navigate things through the “table of contents” widget.

You’ll find rainbow ideas for science and math under the STEM heading. There are activities for literacy, sensory, and art too, under their own headings.

Rainbow Art Ideas

Let’s kick things off with some creative rainbow activities for the kids. You can jump into the fun, too!

Related: St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Bottles

The kids can use tissue paper to make a collaborative rainbow art puzzle.

This rainbow art project is a great combination of process art and a rainbow theme.

Break out the cars for a racing rainbow painting project.

A rainbow sensory collage is a colorful combination of art and sensory for the kids.

You just need paint and paper plates for this open-ended rainbow art activity.

I adore the use of brayers as part of this bubble wrap rainbow process art.

Use a common kitchen tool for some colorful rolling pin art with the children.

Colorful STEM Activities

Below you’ll find math and science rainbow activities. Of course, all of the ideas in this post can be labeled as math simply based on the color aspect. But the ideas below are more focused in on the STEM arena.

Make a set (or two!) of rainbow rocks for your math center. You can even help the kids make their own to take home.

This rainbow science takes the classic baking soda and vinegar experiment to a new level with a colorful, scented twist.

Create a colorful DIY abacus with a few simple craft and sensory supplies.

Have the kids measure, cut, and build a 3D rainbow!

Challenge the kids to look all around the house or classroom on a rainbow toy hunt! Then they can use their rainbow knowledge to craft one with everything they find.

Children can build their fine motor muscles with a fuzzy rainbow sorting activity.

Give your rainbow scientists the chance at color mixing. What a great way to explore how the colors of the rainbows combine to form new colors.

Literacy Rainbow Activities

Let’s talk rainbow-themed literacy ideas!

Make an “I See a Rainbow” book with your students! The kids can make color collages for each page of the book, as they practice sight words and early reading skills.

This fine motor rainbow is another pre-writing activity that gives the kids’ fingers a workout.

Your students can learn to spell their names with rainbows! This activity can be adjusted to a wide variety of levels based on your kids’ needs.

A rainbow busy bag will really exercise the kids fine motor muscles. Those muscles will play a key role in the children’s future writing abilities.

For children ready for sight words, try this color words game.

Challenge the children to work together and make a magnetic letter rainbow! You can even turn it into a letter identification game.

Get the kids learning and singing with a color guessing song. It’s perfect for circle time during a rainbow theme (or anytime, really).

Rainbow Sensory Play

I can’t forget all of the sensory fun when we’re talking about rainbow activities!

This rainbow corn sensory bin is one of my favorites! Probably because you can use the rainbow corn in so many other activities, too.

Put together a set of rainbow glitter jars for your students. They can definitely help you assemble each of the bottles. Here’s a peek at what a few of ours looked like:

I’ve got a collection of even more rainbow sensory bottles if you need more ideas.

Use dyed pasta to make a rainbow sensory bin with the kids. We paired ours with a children’s book!

Create a rainbow sensory writing tray for the kids to make marks in. They can practice making curves and zigzags, writing letters and numbers, practicing their names, and more.

Learn how to dye pumpkin seeds. Then use those rainbow seeds to make sensory bottles or bins.

Set up a rainbow fine motor play activity with rainbow yarn, tongs, and treasure.

Make a super fun rainbow gelatin sensory tub! The kids have such fun using their hands to squish the Jell-O.

This taste-safe rainbow sensory bin is just right for children who are still putting things in their mouths sometimes.

Try a rainbow messy play sensory invitation using dyed pasta.

Now, the question becomes . . . which of these rainbow activities are you going to try first? I’d love to hear about some of your favorites in the comments below.

Materials for Your Rainbow Activities

You likely already have a stash of colorful items in your teacher supply closet, but I thought I’d gather some suggestions for you anyway! Please note that I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Here you go:

Rainbow Preschool Lesson Plans

Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes book suggestions, printable plans, over 30 learning activities (whole group, small group, and centers) related to the theme, and corresponding printables.

Click on the images below for more information about each done-for-you resource.

Be sure to check out the membership options while you’re there!

You can also find us on Teachers Pay Teachers.