With temperatures back down in the 30s this week in Southeast Michigan, we were in desperate need of Spring around here. I can’t control the weather, but we could bring a little springtime cheer indoors with a little kindergarten rainbow art in my classroom. We used the opportunity to refine our sentence writing conventions too and the finished project couldn’t be any more perfect!
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Here’s a quick look at the supplies I used to create this project:
Creating the Rainbows
I love this project because it’s large-scale makes a big decorative impact. And students love creating any artwork that’s larger than an 8.5×11″ sheet of paper. I used 12×18″ sheets of white construction paper and traced a giant rainbow on each one. From there, it was time to paint! When I did previous kindergarten rainbow art projects, I used traditional tempera paint, but this time around I tried something different. I recently received a 12-pack of Kwik Stix and was curious to give them a try. Why? Because each 4″ stick is packed with solid tempera paint. I know, I was skeptical too and really nervous about how much paint each stick could possibly contain.
When I was ready to begin, I called students up to see me two at a time and handed them a paint stick. Kwik Stix claim to be mess-free and dry in 90 seconds, but I didn’t want to take any chances… I had my students put on their paint shirts just in case. That turned out to be a waste of energy. We didn’t get one bit of pant anywhere except on the paper. it was so refreshing to have a completely mess-free painting experience !
Each Kwik Stix tube looked like a glue stick and was sort of a cross between a bingo dotter and an oil pastel. The paints went on smoothly and easily.
My students loved using the Kwik Stix too and used them so responsibly.
Once the “painting” process was complete, it was time to cut the rainbows out. This wasn’t an issue because every bit of paint from those little Kwik Stix dried in 90 seconds! I’ve never seen a painting project dry so fast in my whole life!
The children carefully cut to remove the white trim from their rainbow paintings.
The painted rainbows were a work of art all by themselves, but we still had more work to do.
I traced the outline of a cloud onto sheets 9×12″ sheets of white construction paper and had each child “paint” the lines black, then use scissors to cut the clouds out.
Once the clouds were complete, we glued them onto the bottom of each end of the rainbow.
Rainbow Sentence Writing
The art project was finally complete, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to work on sentence writing. I gave each child a sentence strip and the writing prompt “My favorite color is …”.
Each child used a pencil to write the sentence and add the name of their favorite color.
The spaceman tool from Really Good Stuff is so helpful for helping children put spaces between their words! I looked over each sentence to check for proper capitalization, spaces, punctuation and sight word spellings. Then each child traced their words with a black marker (the color word was traced in the corresponding marker color).
Once the sentences were complete, I mounted each one on a 4″ tall strip of black construction paper. I used a little scotch tape and fishing line to suspend the sentence under the two clouds of each child’s rainbow.
The finished kindergarten rainbow art project was perfect and oh-so-sweet.
I even had one child that could not decide on just one favorite color, which was ok with me. It was extra writing practice!
Download FREE Rainbow Painting Templates and Instructions
I created free cloud and rainbow templates that you can use to easily duplicate this activity in your own classroom. Click the image below to download your free Rainbow Painting template and printable instructions.
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