Rainbow Sticky Wall for Kids and Toddlers

I am not one for wishing time away, but I am ready for warmer weather. The mid-March snowstorms can quit anytime, and I will gladly move on to warmer days and eating al fresco with the kids. We are bringing color and spring vibes to our activities and maybe it will coax the temperatures to cooperate.

If you are looking for a fun way to welcome spring into your home, this sticky wall will be a hit! You can do this even if you are not an artist (just look at my artistic skills!) and you can make this activity however large or small you want. I usually make my sticky walls fairly large because I know all 3 kids will inevitably want to play with it at the same time, but you can scale it back if you want it to feel more approachable for younger kids. Keep reading to check out the details.

All of my kids like sticky walls, but the color sorting is appreciated more from 2-2.5 years old and up in our house.

Here’s What You Need

• Foam shapes

• Con-tact paper

• Painter’s tape- we seriously use this all the time for activities with the kids.

• Markers. I planned to use my colored permanent markers, but they were packed away in the basement recently and I couldn’t get to them easily. We ended up using just typical kid’s washable markers. They worked, but I would have preferred the bolder colors for photos. All that to say, you can totally just use whatever markers you have available to you.

• Scissors

• Bowl

Set up

2-4 minutes

1. Set up your sticky wall. You can write on the back (non-sticky side), just be sure to write any letters or words backwards. Or you can tape your sticky wall up first and write on the sticky side. I drew on the sticky side today just to show you a different method. I drew on the back side in this post.

2. Step One is really the hardest part. Next, simply grab a few handfuls of foam shapes and either demonstrate what to do or let you child go to town!

Clean Up

1-2 minutes

1. Collect the foam shapes and save for a later date. Even if you end up with some on the floor, they are easy to pick up.

2. Take down the sticky wall and throw it away. We usually leave ours out for a few days because the kids keep coming back to it.

My older kids are obsessed with rainbows right now, so this was the perfect activity for them. We talk about ROY G. BIV way more than I anticipated, but I’m calling it science learning and patting myself on the back.

Ellette is just shy of 18 months old and could only color match with a lot of direction, but she thinks sticky walls are awesome! When Brinley was cutting the Con-Tact paper, she was so eager to get to work that she tried making the shapes stick to the plain wall! We were cracking up.

Our sticky wall was very big and took some endurance to fill up. Brinley has a pretty long attention span, but had to take a break mid-way through. I would suggest keeping yours on the smaller side if you have preschoolers at home.

To keep things simple, we combined indigo and violet on our rainbow. I wrote out the acronym, minus indigo, and the kids really used that to determine where each color should go. I think the visual discrimination was tough for them because I didn’t draw two lines of the same color as borders. They got the hang of it eventually though.

The rainbow was so cheerful to look at by the end! I kept it up for a day, but noticed the kids weren’t playing with the sticky wall and guessed they didn’t want to disturb the masterpiece they created. I took down all of the shapes the second night and they gravitated toward this area first thing the following morning. Can you guess what they came up with? Scoll down to check it out!

If you guessed that they used all 3,000 foam pieces to cover the entire sticky wall, you would be correct! I was trying to make waffles or pancakes that morning and they were all working cooperatively, so I just let it happen. It did take a bit more than 2 minutes to clean up every single piece, but the giggles were too sweet to interrupt. Plus, I got to make breakfast in peace. We trade time, right?

How simple and cheerful is this rainbow activity! As long as you don’t let your child have free reign over the whole tub of foam shapes, you will have no problem getting this cleaned up in a snap. Your kids will love it and you get to enjoy some springtime vibes.

Don’t forget to save this to your Pinterest board or send it to a friend! And if you haven’t already, buy some painter’s tape. It is a lifesaver in our house!

Looking for other activities? Check these out:

• Toddler Toy Rescue Wall Activity

• Toddler Friendly Painting with Aluminum Foil

• Paper Towel Roll Candy Drop

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