Rr rainbow day- preschool style

Rr Rainbow day was the middle of the winter so we didn't have sunshine, let alone a rainbow.  I didn't  get a chance to get to everything I had ready.  I didn't even get a chance to read either book I had ready.  It was math day, so we focused on some some fun math activities.  What Makes a Rainbow is a little bit of a little kid book, but it's cute. 

Then we did some addition practice with partners. We talked about what two things God uses to make a rainbow- rain and sun.  I paired the kids up specifically with partners that would complement them.  One partner was the rain drops (blue glass beads) and the other was the sun (yellow/orange pom poms).  I had several sentence strips ready with different addition problems.  We went through them very slowly, first having the rain drop friend add the correct number of raindrops, then having the sunshine friend check,  then the sunshine friend added the correct number of sun-rays and then the raindrop friend checked their work. Then we added the pieces all together and decided on an answer. I filled in the answers as we came up with them.  This was a fun activity and really could be used with many levels.  We are very much at the 'intro' to math facts level. 

  Then, we played a rainbow number bingo.  A few weeks ago we did some informal early assessments with the kids and checked their ability to recognize different numbers and letters.  I used that information to see which numbers each child needed to work on.  I made each child's sheet with the numbers they needed.  Overall, I ended up with 24 different colors/numbers to use on the sheets.  A child that needed to work on 4, say got a few 4s on their paper in a few colors.  None of our friends were not able to recognize the number 1, so I simply didn't include it.  A child that got them all right simply got an assortment of the larger numbers.  If I was doing this activity with a much smaller number I could have had them help program their own sheets prior to playing.  This would have let us practice the skill (number recognition) twice. 

We also worked on this activity with partners.  I paired them up with partners paying attention to make sure each group had a partner who could write bigger numbers.   The kids took their sheet and a cup of skittles (for touching, not eating) and worked somewhere around the room.  They laid the skittles out on the different bands of the rainbow, then counted, and recorded the number.  Of course I gave them a few clean ones to eat later. 

We didn't have time to get to this rainbow rhymes activity, but I'm saving it and hope to get to it another day.   It's a class book based on an idea in a Mailbox magazine.

The inside reads, "Rainbow Rhyme by ______.   My favorite color of the rainbow is ______.  It's the color of ____, you see, and the color of ______.  Yippee!"   I was planning to help them complete the written part and have them draw and color an appropriate picture to match.   I love yellow, and all kitchens should be yellow.

We also signed and sang along to Signing Times, Colors of the Rainbow.  It's from the series Signing Times, which is what we used with out own kids when we were signing a lot.  In the song they name the colors (switching blue and purple for rhyming reasons) and list an item or two that was that color.  First, I said how they were switching the colors in the song (and switched them on my paper rainbow on the flannel board), then we practiced all the signed we would be using. Finally, we sang along with the song.

I brought Bee's rainbow prism along, but there wasn't a bit of sunshine.  I didn't even get it out.

I set out this 'roses' on shapes activity for a few friends to work on at arrival time.   I don't think anyone played with this, but I had picked up a package of clearance roses for 10 cents and wanted to use them.

Last year I did some other things on a rainbow day with the younger class, but I apparently didn't get it posted here, because I can't find it anywhere.  I'll have to search for it later.