Rainbow Treasure Hunt

from 36 months · 30-40 min · Gross motor

What you need

Colour the bottom of each cup in the egg box with a different crayon: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.
Take it out to the garden or the park and give your child the job: find one small thing for every colour.
Let them hunt for a red leaf, a yellow petal, a green blade of grass. Say the colour together as each find goes in.
When every cup has something in it, sit down and look back along the rainbow from red to purple.

Hunting for one thing of each colour means looking hard at what is outside, and every find is a colour word said out loud.

Colour words: Red, orange, purple: every find gets its colour said out loud.
Looking closely: A tiny purple flower is easy to walk past until you're hunting for one.
Matching: Holding a find up to the cup to check it is the same colour.

Notice them holding a find against a cup to check the colour matches.

Berries and mushrooms stay where they grow. Petals, leaves, grass and small stones are all good finds, and everyone washes hands afterwards.

Easier: colour three cups, red, yellow and green, and hunt for just those

Harder: find two things for each colour and talk about which green is lighter