Snipped Yarn Preschool Rainbow Craft

As St. Patrick’s Day draws near, why not spread the luck with a cheerful snipped yarn preschool rainbow craft?

There may not be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, but it is delightfully special, nonetheless.

Your little leprechauns will love how these rainbows brighten up your classroom. And, you will love how this preschool rainbow craft offers a huge amount of skills practice for your little lads and lasses.

This snipped yarn rainbow craft challenges preschoolers to use their best scissor cutting skills, hand control and fine motor skills, too!

Why Do Rainbow Crafts

This project is the perfect balance of fun, artistry and learning!

I love the texture the snipped yarn gives the rainbows – It’s something unexpected.

This craft allows for each piece to turn out completely unique and different from another student’s rainbow. It also requires a whomping huge opportunity to develop scissor skills and fine motor skills!

Rainbow activities aren’t just appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day lesson plans. Rainbow crafts like this one can be added to a weather preschool theme, seasons preschool theme, or a spring preschool theme.

For more St. Patty’s Day hands-on activities, be sure to check out my St. Patrick’s Day Activity Pack for some mighty learning fun for ye little lads and lasses!

Rainbow Themed Books for Kids

Everyone loves a bright and cheery rainbow book! Enjoy these rainbow picks full of spring and colorful illustrations, perfect for preschool and kindergarten.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that at no cost to you, I may earn a small sum if you click through and make a purchase.

Rainbow Craft for Preschool

Preschoolers need loads of opportunities for scissor cutting practice. You can do that by offering cutting practice worksheets or process-based crafts like this one…or both!

This colorful craft is fun rainbow activity for preschoolers. They will love it!

Snipped Yarn Craft

In this rainbow art activity, preschoolers practice scissor cutting by snipping colorful yarn and gluing it onto their own beautiful rainbow creation.

Materials

• yarn in rainbow colors
• rainbow cut-out
• liquid glue or wide double sided tape
• sharp scissors

The Set Up

I have used these wooden rainbow cut-outs which made this craft fun and easy.

In advance, cut four feet lengths of yarn in each color for each student, preferably cotton yarn. Acrylic yarn frays easily and isn’t as easy to cut as cotton.

How to Make Snipped Yarn Rainbow Craft

You will want to guide your preschoolers, step by step, in the important yarn-cutting phase of this rainbow craft.

Offer one color at a time for all your students to snip with their scissors.

I explained that they could choose to make their strings long or short, or they could snip a mixture of long and short. However, I did encourage the students to keep the pieces of yarn less than about four inches, but who is measuring?

Cutting the yarn obviously gives the students more practice in scissor cutting, but it also requires some serious critical thinking on the students’ part.

Unlike paper, you cannot hold out a piece of yarn without it limping over the end of your finger or hand, so the students had to consider and experiment to figure out just how exactly they could cut the yarn.

As you can see from the above picture, one student held a longer length of yarn so that the end dangled away from his hand, and he snipped it into smaller pieces while it dangled in the air. (This is why you need sharp scissors. Use caution, but with proper training, preschoolers can be safe with sharp scissors.)

The student in the foreground, whose hands you can only see, felt that it was easier to cut the yarn if he held several strings at once. Another student tried laying the yarn on the preschool table and snipping with the tip of his scissors. One student asked that I hold one end of the string while she held the other and cut the taut piece of yarn.

Yarn crafts with preschoolers can be time consuming. One easy method to help move the process along is to take one color of yarn to the table and have the children stand and snip while holding the yarn taut.

Once yarn of each rainbow color was snipped into appropriate lengths, I invited the students to tell me what they noticed about their piles of yarn. Immediately students began jabbering about the various lengths of yarn that had been cut.

Who had the longest? What about the teeny tiniest? Who had the biggest pile? And who had the “mixed-upiest” pile?

I asked the students what they noticed about the colors of yarn they had cut.

Rainbow Yarn Glue Art

Once the yarn is cut and ready, I give each student a rainbow shaped cut-out.

I water down some liquid school glue so the students can easily paint the glue onto their cut-out, covering it in its entirety.

Next, students can glue their yarn onto their rainbows, as they desire.

Some students were intentional about the order they added their colors. The above preschooler wanted her rainbow colors to reflect a “real rainbow” so she followed the traditional order.

This student didn’t worry of much about the order of his rainbow colors, but as he added each color he named them and shared something he had seen in that color.

“This color is red. I put red on my rainbow. Strawberries are red.” Every color! I kid you not!

Once all the colors are added, have the preschoolers pull apart cotton balls for the clouds and glue them on.

These are simple rainbows that are a nice mix of crafts and process art. While some preschoolers chose to follow all the colors of the rainbow, others did not. Allowing the children to choose is important.

Here are some of the finished rainbows.

More Rainbow Preschool Crafts

Whether you’re adding this to your St. Patrick’s Day preschool lesson plans or you’re looking for a craft to add to your weather unit, here are funtastic rainbow craft ideas:

• ​​​​​How to Make a Preschool Rainbow Craft with Pipe Cleaners
• ​​​​Rainbow Crafts for Kids
• ​​​​​​​​​20 Rainbow Crafts for Preschool Kids
• ​​​​25 EASY Rainbow Crafts for Preschoolers

Rainbow Crafts for Toddlers

Toddlers love rainbows and crafts just as much as their preschool counterparts. I have rounded up some fabulous, fun rainbow crafts that your toddlers and preschoolers are sure to enjoy!

• ​​​​​​​​​​Paper Plate Rainbow Craft
• ​​​​​Gorgeous Handprint Rainbow Painting
• ​​​​​Rainbow Rolling Pin Art
• ​​​​Easy Rainbow Craft Activities For Toddlers

Rainbow Preschool Toys

Hands-on play in the most exciting way! These rainbow and color themed toys are sure to bring any rainbow theme to life. Grab a few and watch your preschoolers stack, count, and sort in a big way!

More Rainbow Ideas for Preschool

Free Rainbow Preschool Lesson Plans

6 Rainbow Math Activities for Preschoolers

Teach Healthy Eating Habits with Eat the Rainbow Activity