The Red Shed - All About Rainbows

These posts document my teaching adventures in starting up a Reggio-inspired school in my farm shed in January 2023. I’ll share more about how all this came about soon, but in the mean time, I hope you enjoy these moments & learnings.

This week was filled with colourful sensory play, lots of paint (and mess!!!) and most importantly (at least for me and my view of education!) accidental learning through purposeful play.

I set up our sensory table (I had one custom made by Cob&Pickle in Howick…click here for a link to their Facebook page) and put some laminated rainbow images into the trays. I covered these with beans and rice and then let the children ‘dig for the rainbow treasure’. This was such a hit! I used some of the left over rainbow rice I made a good couple of years ago (yes, I am as shocked as you that that batch of rainbow rice is still going strong!). I love the photo of the kids looking underneath the tubs to see the rainbow (make sure to print and laminate it double sided so that it actually shows up nicely both from the top and the bottom).

I bought one of these lovely wooden rainbow stackers from Thornwood Treasures a few years ago for my kids, and it was the perfect open ended toy to bring out for this week. The kids had a lot of fun with them, using them in all sorts of ways…it really is a fantastic toy!

For ‘writing practice’ (I don’t believe in anything too formal in the early years) I use a big white board with lots of different sensory letters for the children to touch and trace. Then they get to have a go at writing the letter themselves with a white board marker. I always start this exercise at snack time (or while they are busy with playdough/plasticine), by reading the corresponding Letterland story that goes along with each letter, while everyone eats their snack or keeps their hands busy. And then they come up one by one so I can give them some undivided attention while they practice their letter formation.

Another favourite process art activity is marble painting. Simply dollop paint onto your paper/cardboard, and then let the kids roll the marble around the page. This is a little trial and error as to how many marbles to use, how quickly to roll (ie before the paint dries!) and for the little hands to practice holding up the tray and getting the hang of moving the marbles around the tray.

My favourite paints to use are the Giotto Tempura paints. The colours are nice and bright and the paint lasts for ages. They are well worth the extra money spent.

We also had some left over cardboard that we used for these (see the last two photos), and I suggest having more scrap paper/cardboard on hand as the kids always love this activity and will want to do more and more and more.

One of my favourite lesson of the year has been introducing the kids to measurements (and of course mixing of colours!) with this really simple set up. We were given a couple of these polystyrene test tube trays, and when you add droppers/syringes/pippettes they are perfect for all sorts of colour experiments.

Everyone got a turn to help me fill up the jugs with water, and then we had a discussion on colours (and what is a primary and secondary colour…this was a recap for the older kiddies) and then it was all systems go for some really fun colour water play.

This was a really fun & colourful week that I enjoyed just as much as my kiddies.