8 Colorful Art Activities to Teach Rainbow Order

One art concept young students always enjoy revisiting is rainbow order. What’s more, knowing rainbow order can help prepare students for diving deeper into more complex color theory concepts, including color mixing.

If you’re looking for a way to introduce or revisit rainbow order, here are 8 motivating activities.

1. Color Wheel Creatures

This project has students complete a simple 6-space color wheel before turning it into a crazy creature.

2. Mouse Paint Color Wheel

This project uses the ever-popular book Mouse Paint as a jumping off point for creating a circle of mice in rainbow order.

3. Rainbow Cities

This project helps students practice their color mixing skills while learning about the basics of architecture.

4. Collaborative Rainbow Collage

This idea is great for early finishers. All you need is a large sheet of roll paper with a basic rainbow drawn out, old magazines, glue sticks, and scissors. Students can hunt through the magazines for different colors of the rainbow. When they find them, they can cut them out and glue them in the correct spots to create a giant rainbow collage.

5. Secret Message Rainbows

Have students write a secret message in white oil pastel in an arch shape across their papers. Then, have them paint a rainbow over the top to reveal it!

6. ROY G BIV Collage

This simple exercise from way back in our archives combines rainbow order, painting skills, cutting skills, and gluing skills! It’s perfect for your kindergartners.

7. Rainbow Weaving

Although more on the craft side of things, this simple weaving project would be great to help develop those fine motor skills

8. Rainbow Shaving Cream Art

This activity is great for smaller groups of students or when you have an extra set of hands to help out. If it’s too difficult for your students to create the rainbow shape, you could have them lay down the paint in straight lines too.

Try one of the ideas above the next time your students need to brush up on rainbow order!

How do you teach rainbow order in your classroom?

Do you have any other ideas or resources to share?