Color Book - Cover (Rainbows)

Fall is the perfect time to learn about color and explore art with many different mediums.  With younger learners, art is more about the process of creation.  This unit provides an opportunity to try many different processes and mediums including:  water color painting, print making, rubbings, bubble painting, cutting, directed drawing, stamping, finger painting (blending colors), folding,  stenciling, and sewing.

You can begin with the cover to introduce the unit, but I have ended with the cover as a concluding activity, and that works well too.

We read the book A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman and then use a prism and a flashlight to create a rainbow in the classroom. 

Some other great color books to have on hand are


White Rabbit's Color Book by Alan Baker

Pete the Cat:  I Love My White Shoes by James Dean & Eric Litwin

Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle

To complete the cover we use water color paints to make a rainbow.  Since this is a first experience for many students, I carefully demonstrate how to dip your paintbrush in water and swirl it around in the paint working across the paint palate in rainbow order, and of course thoroughly rinsing between each color so the paints don't mix.   Two small dots are on the cover page to assist the children in making the first arch of the rainbow.  If they start at one dot, and make a large red arch and finish it at the other dot, there should be enough room for all the colors.  This is a great opportunity to teach the sequence of the colors of the rainbow.  I also encourage the kids to paint at least one letter on the color page with each color before they rinse their brush so the title is a rainbow too.