Rainbow Food Scavenger Hunt
This simple activity will inspire your kids to look at food differently, and it might even make them more curious about trying some new foods! It’s a great way to spend some time together on a rainy lockdown day or any quiet afternoon.
This is a flexible activity - you can really do this any way you choose.
Suggested Steps:
Start by finding something that has rainbow colours - a flag, toy, book or even a picture is fine.
Spend a few minutes looking at your item and noticing all the rainbow colours. Say them out loud together.
Notice the way the colours in a rainbow are arranged in a pattern: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.
Invite your kids to go on a rainbow 🌈 hunt and see what foods they can find in your house in all the different colours. *All foods are fine to include! Don’t limit your hunt to fruits and veggies - look for dried beans, meat, cheese, and foods that come in jars, bottles and packages too.
*Success Tip: Don’t comment on whether any of the foods are “healthy” or “junk” or anything else. Simply keep the focus on all the different rainbow colours, and call each food by it’s actual name - like “apples” “candy”or “cookies.” This helps kids to relax around all foods equally.
Set up a space on a table or mat on the floor to lay out all the foods your kids find, in the rainbow pattern.
Admire the beautiful rainbow of foods!
Count up how many foods there are in each of the rainbow colours.
Ask your kids what they notice about the foods in the rainbow. Some ideas and questions to consider:
which colour did they find the most foods for? the least?
what’s the same about the foods in each colour? what’s different?
sort the foods in each colour from lightest to darkest and notice how they look
pick one or two foods to explore using all your senses.
Make a rainbow snack using foods from all the rainbow colours - let your kids be creative and combine whatever foods they want!
We’d love to see this activity in action: snap a picture of your food rainbow and rainbow snack and send it to us hello@rainbowplate.com or share it on social media - make sure to tag it #myrainbowplate and tag us @rainbowplate so we can see it!
For more ideas like this, check out our Rainbow Food Explorers at Home ebook - you can get your copy here.
Have fun! 🌈