God made All Colors and Rainbows

Here it is! Our fun craft on a windy day! Here is our story.
We woke up on a beautiful Wednesday morning and we had planned to have our Bible and Chinese lessons that morning. I ended up ditching Chinese in exchange for a picnic lunch at the playground.
My plan:
-Picnic lunch at the playground
-Play a bit
-Do our Bible lesson outdoors (God made all colors and rainbows)
-Make a beautiful craft to go with the lesson and share on our blog.
Reality:
We did manage to do it all, but the craft took us about 3 times longer than I expected.
Why? Well, take heed, my friends...do NOT attempt to make a craft outdoors on an extremely windy day. Enough said. Ok, let's get to the beautiful craft's instructions!

Materials Needed:

- half of a paper plate (one per child)
- ribbon in rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). Another viable option is to use thinly cut flannel strips in rainbow colors.
- white ribbon (for clouds)
- blue and white or plain light blue ribbon (for rain)
- gold or shiny yellow ribbon (for sun), optional
- tacky glue
- scissors
- one sheet of black construction paper (black tissue paper would work better, but we ran out)
- children's version of the Bible story of Noah's Ark (the first rainbow)

Steps:
0. Read the story of Noah's Ark and discuss how God made the first rainbow. 
1. Cut the paper plate in half. Give one half to each child.
2. Cut small pieces of the white ribbon and glue along the very top of the paper plate.
3. Start with the red ribbon. Using your tacky glue, trace an arch below the white clouds where the red ribbon will go. Start on one end and slowly glue all along the arch.
4. Continue with orange, then yellow. 
5. Don't worry if the ribbon is longer than the paper plate. Once dry, you can cut them all to size.
6. Next come green, then blue and finally, purple.
7. Here, you have two choices, you can make a little sun inside the rainbow, like us, or you can use more white ribbon pieces and glue them on the bottom of the rainbow (for a "rainbow in the clouds" effect). 
If you do decide to make the sun, you need four 2-3 inch strips for the rays. Glue those. Then make a circle for the sun (glue ends to make a ring). Put glue on one edge. Place on top of rays. See first picture. Instead of a single ring (like we made), you can make a spiral with the gold ribbon so it looks fuller on the inside of the sun, but we didn't have time to let it dry.
8. Cut off any extra ribbon.
Keep reading to learn how to make the back.

    

To make the back, we will need the blue and white ribbon and the black paper.
1. Carefully, once dry, turn your plate over.
2. Tear up the sheet of black construction paper and crumple the pieces a bit. These will be the black rain clouds.
3. We had a beautiful blue ribbon with white dots that looked like raindrops, so we decided to use that, but plain blue ribbon will work, too. We only had enough for two longer strings of it to represent the rain, but you can make more, shorter or longer. Glue them to the bottom (the straight part of the paper plate) on the back.
4. Glue all the crumpled black paper all over the back of the half paper plate. 

Talk about how you need dark rain clouds, some rain and the sun to make a rainbow.
This is how the back looks like. I think black tissue paper would look better, but we ran out.

If you want to show both at the same time, simply make the front on one paper plate and the back on a separate paper plate.

FRONT LOOK

BACK LOOK

This was a fun craft that doesn't take a whole lot of time, but it did for us because we made it outside and it was a very windy day. I hope you decide to make this beautiful and easy craft.