Can Badger and Fox find the treasure at the end of the rainbow? Does it even exist? At the End of the Rainbow is a lovely story about friendship and treasure and has inspired many crafts, learning activities, discussions and even a birthday party!
The Story: Badger and Fox have heard there is treasure at the end of the rainbow. They’re not sure what treasure is (although Badger thinks it will make them rich!) so they decide to try and find it. On their way to the end of the rainbow they come across Squirrel and his treasure, Mother Duck and her treasure and Old Hare and his treasure. Their treasure isn’t gold or silver and as Fox and Badger shelter from the rain they realise that treasure is something special that makes you happy. The rainbow reappears after the rain stops but Badger and Fox are too busy appreciating their new treasure to notice.
Author: A.H. Benjamin / Illustrator: John Bendall-Brunello
Rainbows provide great learning opportunities and activities in many curriculum areas. At the End of the Rainbow can stimulate discussion and creative writing about what children think could be at the end of a rainbow and what treasure means to them. Children can write or draw pictures about their treasures.
Rainbows are lovely to include in a topic on weather. To make a rainbow weather hat cut a thick strip of card for the headband. Glue five strips of coloured paper together to make a rainbow then staple it onto the headband. Add a picture of the sun and some cotton wool clouds and your headband is ready to wear. When I made this with a group of children one of them brought in strips of silver tinsel to stick under the headband to make ‘rain’ hair.
I have used this template as a basis for many rainbow crafts. Painting or colouring it helps children to consolidate their understanding of the order of the colours of the rainbow. This hanger is easy to make using using thick card, finger paints and cotton wool balls for the clouds. You can introduce the primary colours with this activity and invite children to mix paints to make orange, green, indigo and violet before continuing with further colour mixing experiments.
Finger paint, colour or paint the rainbow template then cut it out and stick it onto blue paper to create a weather picture. Discussing how rainbows are formed can lead to a fun rainbow making experiment (but you do need to wait until a day when the sun shines!). Children can give their theories, opinions and answers to the question ‘How are rainbows formed?‘. Then fill glasses of water and stand them on white paper. Watch what happens when the sun shines through the glass and ask children to explain what they think is happening.
This is a fun craft that uses a thin canvas board, crepe paper and water. Children tear different coloured crepe paper into small pieces, arrange them in a rainbow shape on the canvas then spray them with (not too much!) water using a plant sprayer. Leave the picture to dry overnight then peel off the crepe paper. The colour bleeds onto the canvas to make a rainbow.
For a rainbow birthday cake, slice through a round cake then spread a thin layer of icing or butter cream onto each semicircle before decorating it with fruit or Smarties in a rainbow pattern. Rainbow food plates are fun for parties too. They always look so appetising and are really healthy. We’ve used the following fruits and vegetables (and cheese!) for ours but would love to hear any other suggestions.
- Red: baby tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, peppers, cranberries, apples, cherries, dried cranberries
- Orange: carrots, oranges, peppers, satsumas, clementine, kumquats, apricots, mandarin oranges, physalis, dried apricots
- Yellow: bananas, peaches, sweetcorn, pineapple, grapefruit, cheese cubes
- Green: grapes, cucumber, celery, apple, kiwi fruit, olives, peppers, broccoli, fresh peas, apples
- Blue: blueberries
- Purple: grapes, olives, blackberries, raisins
Rainbow kebab sticks are also tasty and fun for children to make. Older children can cut up their own fruit and vegetables then thread them onto wooden skewers.
Rainbows inspire so many lovely activities and are a great way to introduce and reinforce colour recognition. Do you have a favourite story about rainbows?
More Rainbow arts, crafts, books and learning activities on Pinterest
I love the rainbow fruit plate, very tempting! #Pintorials
It’s a great idea for a birthday party or a playdate – something for everybody 🙂
Love the sound of that book and all those activities, they look so pretty.
Thanks for sharing #LetKidsBeKids
We love rainbow inspired crafts and activities. It was difficult to choose which ones to include!
These are all great ideas, especially the rainbow hat! Sounds like a good book to read too 🙂
The rainbow hats are fab for a class assembly. It’s lovely seeing a whole group of children wearing them 🙂
Fantastic ideas – will definitely try some with my girls and must look out for that book…..
The story is lovely with a great message 🙂
Love the rainbow hat and the rainbow fruit kebabs idea – will be giving these a try. Thank you for sharing 🙂
I think the rainbow hat is my favourite but we enjoyed doing the crepe paper rainbow too 🙂
Ha! How did I not know your blog before? I love it here already. 🙂
I love your rainbow hat. We will definitely try this. The books sounds good too.x
Thanks Melody. The rainbow headband is one of my favourite crafts 🙂
I love rainbows! Adding this to our to do crafts. #letKidsbeKids
Have fun Abigail! We love rainbow crafts 🙂
I love how your activities link to the theme of the book. My favourite is the crepe paper rainbow – it looks so pretty! Thanks for linking up to #playathometuesdays
Thank you! The crepe paper rainbow is fun. It looks such a mess with all the water on it but the kids are amazed when they take the paper off the next day 🙂
These rainbow activities are really cute – great for toddlers!
They’re great for a range of ages. I’ve done them mostly with 4 to 6 year olds.
Grace says – I love rainbows and my favourite is the one with the tissue paper and water spray. That is so pretty. What a fab #minicreations and thanks for linking up 🙂
The crepe paper and water one is fun. I think we should try some different pictures using that technique 🙂
We love book-inspired activities! Thanks for sharing at the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop! We hope you join us again next week!
Books can inspire lots of great activities 🙂
Great rainbow ideas – I love that plate of food at the end! It sounds a sweet book too. I love rainbows!
The rainbow plates come out at every birthday party now, it’s rare when a child won’t eat anything from that plate!