Colour Scavenger Hunt for Toddlers and Preschoolers
A rainbow colour scavenger hunt is a fun activity for toddlers and preschoolers to do at home or in the classroom. Kids will learn about colours, colour order and sorting, and they’ll get to build a rainbow too!
Whether your toddlers and preschoolers already know their colours or whether they’re just learning them, they’ll love this exciting colour activity. It’s a colour scavenger hunt! And it’s not just any colour scavenger hunt. It’s a rainbow colour scavenger hunt! It can be done indoors or outdoors, with one child or with a group of kids.
This is a great activity to do at any time of the year, but it makes a great St. Patrick’s Day activity for daycare or preschool.
Little kids love colours, they love games, and they love a challenge, and this activity is a winning combination of all three.
It comes from Kirsten of The Willow Tree Home Daycare. Kirsten is a long-time HH follower and a member of my private Facebook group for Childcare Providers. She’s super-creative when it comes to thinking up engaging, learning activities for the kids in her daycare.
Kirsten shared photos of this colour scavenger hunt in my group the other day, and I knew you’d love it, so I asked her if I could share it on my blog. It reminds me of our rainbow collages but Kirsten’s activity is much more energetic and exciting.
She said she thought this activity up one night, and when they did it the next day, it worked out even better than she’d envisioned. The kids loved it, and she’s planning to do an outdoor version of the activity this summer.
Ok, let’s play!
For this colour scavenger hunt, you’ll need:
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To play, the kids took turns rolling a large, coloured die. After each roll, everyone searched the playroom for items that matched the colour that had been rolled.
Note: If you don’t have a large coloured die, you can call out colours for the kids, or the kids can pull coloured pieces of paper from a hat.
After their search, the children placed their finds on a blue mat in the playroom and rolled the die to reveal another colour.
They continued searching and adding treasures to the mat until they had lots of items in all the colours of the rainbow.
Then they sorted their treasures by colour.
They made piles of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. And when they had all the colours separated, they worked together to make their rainbow.
Starting with red, they placed their treasures one by one, to form an arc that reached from one end of the mat to the other. They worked their way inward until their rainbow was complete.
Isn’t it beautiful?
What a wonderful colour-learning activity for young children.
Thanks for sharing your inspiring idea, Kirsten!
Benefits of a scavenger hunt
- it’s an activity that both toddlers and preschoolers can participate in
- it’s a great activity for one child or for a group of children
- it gets kids up and moving
- it doesn’t require any specific supplies or materials – you just use the items around you
Skills that a scavenger hunt helps develop
File this activity for a rainy day or for when you need an activity to accompany a rainbow theme or a unit on colours.
For more colour-learning activities for kids, check out:
Fizzing Colours Experiment
Watercolour Drip Art
I Spy Discovery Bottles
Paper Plate Colour Wheel
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
