Rainbow Dot Art

Rainbows always make me think of spring. They are a great way to practice colors and sorting skills. Our rainbow dot art uses paper circles to create a lovely rainbow.

Rainbow Dot Art

In our post for M&M’s, I created dot art pages. We covered the dots with M&M’s and created some cool pictures including a rainbow. Aiden loves using our circle punch to make paper circles, so I thought a dot rainbow made from paper circles would be something he would like designing.

You’ll Need:

• contact paper
• masking tape (or painter’s tape)
• circle punch
• paper (we used construction paper but printer paper or cardstock would work as well)

You can hang the contact paper on the wall (sticky side out) using painter’s tape like we did with our shape rocket sticky wall. Or you can place the contact paper on the table. Use tape to secure the contact paper to the table.

Use the circle punch to make lots of circles in all of the colors of the rainbow. For our construction paper, we found that punching two pieces of construction together resulted in cleaner circles. Our circle punch didn’t like doing just one piece of construction paper. This step is great for kids to do (with supervision). The blade may be sharp, so you may need to help your child remove the paper circles from the punch. Usually they fall out just fine, but sometimes they get stuck.

Talk to your child about what a rainbow looks like. Maybe have her draw one on paper before building one out of paper circles. Depending on your child’s abilities, you may just let your child create the rainbow dot art on his own.

 

I started Aiden’s rainbow for him by placing paper circles at the bottom of the contact paper.

Aiden added circles to make his rainbow.

He didn’t like the way the rainbow was coming along, so he removed the circles and started again. We found that starting with purple helped to create the rainbow shape he was looking for. I helped him place the purple circles on the contact paper. Then, he added the rest of the colors in reverse rainbow order (blue next, then green, etc.)

At first, Aiden didn’t want to create any rainbow art, so I created my own. He thought it looked cool and decided to make his own. This happens a lot when I suggest an activity. Aiden can’t picture it in his head, so he says, “That sounds boring.” When I start the activity by myself, he joins in and wants to do whatever I’m doing. He usually deems it fun and worthy of doing again.

More Rainbow Ideas

• Learn how to make a real rainbow with household supplies. (This post has 120 more rainbow inspired activities at the bottom.)
• Try these 15 rainbow scavenger hunts.
• Make rainbow dot art with M&M’s.