Weaving a Rainbow

We made this out of a left over bit of garden trellis and strips of coloured fabric. We were a bit low on purple and had no orange at all but I think it was still quite effective.  Also, I tried to have several different types of fabric in order to give the boys a more interesting tactile experience and let them hold and investigate the strips they liked for a while.

The boys took part well.  Charlie needed quite a bit of help but pulled the fabric through on his own.  I used a lot of repetitive language like, 'Down, Up, Pull!' to try and get him to understand what we were trying to do.  James needed less help and once he saw what we were doing managed to do the weaving bits himself whilst I just had to tuck the ends in.

Update: 

Granny read this and came over with some purple!

Bendy Twisty Sensory Rainbows

We made these with jumbo pipe cleaners stuck into play dough.

These were made out of bendy wax sticks.  They were too small for the boys to deal with so I gave them some to hold and do there own thing with whilst I made them some rainbows which I stuck into shaving foam 'clouds'.

I had a very hard time trying to get James not to eat the shaving foam!

Rainbow Waffles

I found a new blog this week with a lot of rainbow activities for us to try, http://shareandremember.blogspot.com/search/label/rainbow. I'm sure we will try some more of the things here but the activities that really spoke to me were the rainbow circles,

and the rainbow waffles!

Last year I made a rainbow birthday cake for James and Charlie's 8th birthday so I had all the food colourings in the cupboard.  I also have a circular waffle iron so it just had to be done really! Yesterday seemed a good day to do this as Gaby was home (strike day) and I new she'd want to join in. She helped me make the waffles and then we all sat down to eat them...

James was not terribly keen....

...but Charlie finished them all off!!

Rainbow Sand

A few things we've done with our rainbow sand....

Flowery Rainbow Activity

Our local park is full of colour at the moment so it occurred to me whilst I was walking the dog there yesterday that we could go and look at the flowers, talk about the colours and take some pictures to make a rainbow!  We took A LOT of photos.  We got some of every colour although we did have to search quite hard for blue!

I cut the flowers out and then today we stuck them onto one big rainbow.  

Rainbow Rice

This is the main sensory play activity I've made to bring out for our rainbow theme.  I've made it before, after the boys were playing with it a lot when first at school, however, I've now learned to fix the colour with vinegar!

....we all enjoy playing with it!

£1.50 Well Spent

Another Charity Shop bargain! I found this foot massager by chance when we stopped off for lunch on our way back from Cornwall at the weekend. I don't think you need to spend hundreds of pounds on 'special needs' toys to get good sensory equipment, just got to keep your eyes open in the right places!

James has the right idea,

Charlie is doing what I thought he would do with it!