You know it has been a day and a half when you look at the clock and realize you’ve not FaceTimed your Mum all day. I like to call her when I wake up just to check in on the world. Then after the Archers I call for a full catch up. Not today pals. Not today. Arthur managed to break the child lock off the cleaning cupboard, sprinkled beads everywhere, emptied out some k’nex boxes, and when he wasn’t tornado-ing around the house he just stood millimeters from my legs and cried. Happy hump day to me!
Luckily the whole theme of rainbows is so cheerful that even with the chaos around me, and the soundtrack to my day being whining, I help upbeat. We started today with a really easy craft that I found on Instagram.
For the craft you will need
- Beads
- Scissors
- paper
- Pipe cleaners
To start I cut two cloud shapes in some cream colored card stock. I wanted to use white, but I couldn’t get the new pack of white open, and I didn’t have the inclination to go and source some scissors. It was an exercise in complete laziness. No regrets. Then I looked at the beads I had and matched whatever color pipe cleaners I had. I then folded the pipe cleaners in half and taped them onto the back of the cloud. You don’t have to fold the pipe cleaners if you don’t want, but I didn’t have a lot of different colors, and the ones I did have were not exactly correct rainbow colors anyway, so I made an executive decision and went with it.
The minute I brought the boys to the table to introduce them to the craft their interest was piqued. We don’t do a lot of things with beads because Arthur throws everything around the place, but I think I’m going to let go a bit and try and do more. Their eyes looked so shiny and bright when they saw them and all three of them instantly shoved their hands in the bowl to feel them.
Whilst the big two chatted and threaded their beads I got a pipe cleaner and shoved a few beads on it to give to Arthie. He can’t be near anything this tiny without me hovering right over him. But he carefully pulled them all off and then waited patiently whilst I restrung them for him a couple of times. He got a god 15 minutes out of it before a bead fell on the ground and the delightful bouncing sound set him off. Before I knew it he had a handful and was poised to throw. I quickly scooped him up and distracted him before the dog, the cat, and my feet, were subjected to tiny little multicolored objects everywhere.
Another Instagram find for our academic time. I saw this awesome rainbow stacking idea and knew I could adapt it so each one of the boys could enjoy it.
I glued three paper towel rolls onto cardboard bases. Then I sliced up some colored card. I split it into two groups. One for Ted, one for Will. Then for Arthie I just took one strip of each and glued them into circles. His could stay blank. For Teddy I chose 5 sight words he’s been working on. Ran, big, bed, sad and hat. For each of these words I found 6 rhyming words and wrote them each onto a different color of the rainbow. I then put all 35 rings into his messy tray. He selected a red ring to start, put it on his tube, then sorted through the tray to find all the words that rhymed. Having them colored like the rainbow made it perfectly for his reading ability after he chose a red he moved to orange, sounded out all the choices, then picked which one sounded like his red word.
The concept was the same for William. However instead of rhyming words he is working on expanding his vocabulary. I absolutely loathe when you ask people how something was and they say “it was good”. This isn’t the book 1984. There are thousands of linguistic options out there planet earth. No child of mine is going to be in the “it was fun” club.
For each red word he pulled out he sorted through his own bin and found synonyms and more sophisticated vocabulary choices for the word written on his red ring.
For Arth he just happily sat on the kitchen table and stacked his blank rings again and again and again. He looked extraordinarily smug the whole time. I know him. He couldn’t have cared less about the stacking. But he recognized he had the same activity as his brothers, and this little pig loves nothing more than feeling like one of the gang.
That’s it for day 2 on rainbows. I hope you’ll come back tomorrow to check out our rainbow science experiments. We are trying walking water and skittle rainbows (if I happen to have skittles in the cupboard!)
LINKS AND SOURCES TO RESOURCES
- Craft: bead and pipe cleaner rainbows
- Read: 40 rainbow books for kids
- Educate: Rainbow rings
- Watch: The science of rainbows
Raising Truffles 