Travis has been a big helper decorating our new home, and this project was a fantastic way to continue recent projects where we talked about exact rainbow order. It’s also a great review of shapes before he steps into pre-k in a few weeks!

Sorry grown-ups, but this one’s a little labor-intensive on your part at the front end. Using construction paper in all the colors of the rainbow, I cut out a square, rectangle, triangle, and circle from each.

While I was busy cutting, Travis got in some practice with safety scissors:

Your child might also like to try tracing or drawing shapes of his or her own as you work.

Once the shapes were ready, we needed to sort! Travis has been very into sorting lately, so loved helping separate the pieces into four piles by shape.

For each group, we snipped a long ribbon and then glued the pieces on in rainbow order, singing the order of the colors as we went: “Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Makes a Rainbow.” (My apologies to indigo and violet).

When we had finished with the rectangles, Travis excitedly asked, “Are we going to do another one??” He chose triangles next, and so on until all our shapes were glued.

This project was gorgeous even while drying on the counter!

While the shapes dried, we made the finishing touch – white cloud shapes with puffy cotton balls glued on. We added these below the purple shapes on our ribbons.

To assemble your mobile, glue two jumbo craft sticks together at the middle. Note: You can have your child color on the craft sticks with marker if they’d like to, but since this part of the mobile will hang up on the ceiling, it’s not necessary.

Glue one strand of shapes onto each of the four craft stick ends, then use a length of yarn or ribbon to suspend your mobile.

You’ll have a rainbow to cheer you every day in your home, whether you’ve just moved in or have been there for years!