Need an alternative to the toys all over the floor? Instead of spreading them out, kids can gather them in as their toys make a rainbow.
Use as big a piece of paper as possible or several put together and draw an outline of a rainbow, in a big half circle. Make one big line for each color, with the red on the outside and the purple on the inside. Use all of the 6 basic colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
Kids bring the toys from the far corners of the area and match the color of the toy to the color line of the rainbow. All the red toys go on the red line, all the orange on the orange line, and so on. Not only are kids practicing the colors, they are also making decisions. A toy can easily have more than one color, so which line will it match? How does your child decide? If one color is a favorite, no matter how small that bit of color on the toy, that could be where it will end up. There might also be some colors that are hard to tell. Are there any items at your house called one color by one person and another color by someone else?
Some children may play at this longer than others, depending on their interests and ages. With all the toys together, kids will find different ways to play with them, some that they may not have thought of before. In any case, with the toys on the paper it is easy and quick to slide them into the toy box.
This activity doesn’t have to wait for a rainy day. After all, could we ever have too many rainbows?