Create your own colourful rainbow with this simple paper weaving activity. Choose your favourite colours, weave the strips over and under the card, and watch your design come together.
It’s a lovely way for children to experiment with colour, patterns and texture, and there’s no need for everyone’s rainbow to look the same. Mix up the colours, try different patterns and make it completely your own!
Time to complete: 10-20 mins
Difficulty: Easy
Adult Help: 🌿 A little help – An adult may need to help younger children with making the cuts in the background card and getting the first few strips started. Children can then do most of the weaving themselves, with occasional help to keep the strips in place and secure the finished design with glue. Older children should be able to complete most of the activity independently.
You will need…
- A piece of coloured card or paper for the background
- Several strips of coloured paper
- Scissors
- Glue
- Pens or pencils
Let’s get making…
Choose some coloured paper. Choose colours that make you happy. They don’t need to follow the colours of a traditional rainbow. We have used A4 paper here. Cut these into strips. We have made our strips about a centimetre wide, but a little wider or thinner is fine.
Choose a piece of card as your background. Leaving a border of about 2 or 3 centimetres around the edge, cut even lines the same distance apart as the width of your paper strips.
Choose your first paper strip, and start weaving them in and out of the card. Grab another strip and weave that in and out. Keep going until you have filled the paper completely.
Once you’re happy with the design, glue the edges down around the edge, trimming any excess paper.
Want to take it further?
If you’ve loved having a go at paper weaving and would like to take it a bit further, why not have. go at these ideas:
- change the shape of the background card. Would you prefer a heart or a star. Maybe you could choose a shape of your favourite animal.
- What happens if the cut lines on the background card are not even? What effect dies it create if the cut lines followed a wavy pattern instead?
- Could you make a pattern using your weaving? Perhaps even a bit of an optical illusion.
- What would it look like if your strips were all different widths?