Rainbow Cardboard Tube Craft

We love creating crafts and activities with recycled materials.  One of our favorite materials is Cardboard tubes!  Paper towel rolls, wrapping paper rolls, aluminum foil cardboard rolls…So much can be made with and from them!  We’ve done cardboard tube stamp roll painting, cardboard tube rainbow binoculars, and even a cardboard tube juice box cover with them. 
This Rainbow craft was fun to make and even more fun to play with.  We’ve been using it in all kinds of pretend play activities lately.

Cardboard Tube Rainbow Craft

This post is part of the Project Create & Recycle series and this month’s theme is cardboard tubes.  We can’t wait to see all of the fun crafts and activities linked up this month.  Check them out on the blogs and the links below.

We started with a plain paper tube and just pulled out the paints.  I didn’t get any shots of the kids painting this one, but it was fun!  Once the paint dried, I cut strait down the tube to make the rainbow arch.

Fine Motor Skills:

A little glue and one cotton ball for each side of the rainbow were all we needed to finish our rainbow.  Fine motor tip:  Pulling a cotton ball into a strand is an excellent way to practice fine motor skills.  Pulling the cotton ball into a strand without ripping the cotton requires a tripod grasp and strength of the arches of both hands.  This is a great way to strengthen those muscles need for an appropriate grasp on a writing utensil.  Pulling cotton balls into strips of cotton is a fine motor strengthening activity that we will definitely be doing again.

So, how did we play with our rainbows after they were done?  Watch this space, you’ll be seeing these rainbows again, soon!

Do you have any cardboard tube activities or crafts to share?  Tell us about them!

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