How to Create Rainbow Collage Art for Classroom Display

Last Updated on January 28, 2022 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: Get the entire group of preschoolers busy with this rainbow collage art. This activity strengthens color recognition skills and makes a lovely piece for classroom display!

As we enter spring, I like to add a variety of color activities to our rainbow theme.

We’ve spun rainbows, we hung them, we’ve even driven cars through paint to make them.

I also love to display them on our wall, such as when we made our giant color wheel.

This year, after purchasing some unfinished wood squares, I came up with a new way to create and display the rainbow.

It was so easy that even our 2 year olds could participate!

And it looks so nice hanging on our classroom wall.

How to Create Rainbow Collage Art for Classroom Display

What we used:

Unfinished wood squares
Washable tempera paint in the colors of the rainbow
White washable glue
Assorted small pieces that are the colors of the rainbow

Step 1: Painting the Wood Squares

Invite the children to paint each square one of the rainbow colors.

Since we have more children than the 6 colors we used, we made 2 of each color. (I only used 1 of each color for the display, though.)

When finished we had six different colored squares for our rainbow – red, orange, yellow, red, green, blue, purple.

CLICK HERE to find more color recognition activities!

I love painting activities because there is so much fine motor going on. And truly, I think it’s always a favorite with our 2 and 3 year olds.

They aren’t picky about what they are painting on. They simply love to paint!

While painting each square, ask the children what colors they are using. They might even say which one is their favorite.

Step 2: Sorting and Gluing the Pieces

Now it’s time to gather all the small pieces that were saved for this activity.

I happened to have plastic plates in the colors of the rainbow.

I had the children help me sort the items by color, placing them on the matching plates.

(Note: I’ve created free printables to help with the sorting process. Scroll down to find the link to the download!)

Invite the children to brush glue all over the painted squares.

Once a colored square is given to a child, have him find the matching colored pieces.

We had 3 different children working on this at a time on our small table. They were very careful to pay attention to the colors while placing them on the squares!