Rainbow Rain Stick Craft

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Make a rainbow rain stick using recycled materials and items around the house! This is a great musical instrument for young children that sounds just like rain!

As we explored rainbows the last couple of weeks Livia started to grasp the concepts on how water and sun interact. Although she is not quite there yet, she is definitely getting the basics. When we sat down to do our craft for the afternoon she decided she wanted to make rainbow rain. As she watched me start to pull out the stuff to see if we could replicate a rainbow she went into full blown melt down. I had completely misunderstood. After talking it out and calming her down she was finally able to get it across to me that she wanted it for her band…Needless to say, this turned out awesome, has held up great, and the kiddos have absolutely loved it.

How To Make a Rainbow Rain Stick:

 

Items Needed:

• Paint
• Paper Roll
• Paint Brushes
• Rice
• Ribbon
• Glue
• Construction Paper
• Gold (paint or glitter)

Let your kids decorate the cardboard tube however they want. I used this as a chance to talk to about ROYGBIV, but really as long as your child is creating let them do whatever inspires them!

While the paint dries cover your sheet of construction paper with gold. Set this aside to also dry.

Once both are dry use the tube to trace out two circles (one for each end). You want them to be a bit bigger than the actual hole so that you have room to fold over and glue down on the sides.

When we went to glue ours down it was a little bit on the tight end. If yours is don’t worry. As long as it can reach over the ends you can make it work.

To strengthen and seal the construction paper we added a dab of glue and then used a wet paint brush to make sure every edge was sealed down tight.

And then because our edges were not long enough to hold a solid seal, we grabbed a strip of ribbon and glued it around the top to hold down all the edges.

After all the glue has dried flip over, fill with about 1/4 cup of dry rice, and repeat step to cover the hole. If you want your rain stick to have more of a falling sound instead of a rushing sound some things you can do are add nails (small) or flat push pins through the tube and then wrap and seal the tube with a paper before decorating. This will require a thicker tube than an average paper roll. 

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