Learning Games for Kids- Jumping the Rainbow

Learning games for kids that work on many skills are amazing. This Jumping the Rainbow game works in fine motor skills, estimating and problems solving. We played a similar game this summer at my house called Landing Spot On! Jumping the Rainbow involved trying to use a button to make a gold coin jump off a section of the rainbow and into a black bowl.

The challenge I gave my son was to try to get a gold coin into the bowl (pretend pot of gold) from somewhere on the rainbow. He could launch the coin with the button from any color of the rainbow and he could move the bowl up to the edge of the blue area of the rainbow. We happened to have bunch of pretend gold coins to send flying. ( I bought a bunch of them last summer. We use them a lot. Most recently we used them with number mats.)

After each coin launch, we talked about how close the coin had gotten to the bowl. We then talked about what changes would need to take place for the next launch to be successful.

Here are some variables we talked about for this game:

• How much pressure should you to put on the coin with button?
• Where to should you place the button on the coin when trying to launch it?
• What color circle should the coin be  placed in to launch it?
• Where in a particular color should the coin be placed to launch it?
• Wouldn’t it be easier to just move the bowl closer to the rainbow circles?
• Where should you be sitting when you try to launch the coin?

Thinking through each of these questions helped to clarify just where the optimum launching spot was. It was such fun to break down the previous choices and build on the information we gained after each launch.

After playing Jumping the Rainbow, my son taught me some other learning games for kids that used the same game elements.

Other Learning Games for Kids

• My son tried placing the rainbow game mat on the supports of a chair. The game board slipped forward. My son decided the rainbow game mat made a wonderful ramp. The black bowl could be placed on the floor beneath the ramp. The coins could be released from one of the color circles and sent slipping into the bowl. To get that to work you had to know how high up to place the coin and where to center the coin.
• The second of the learning games for kids my son created involved setting the rainbow mat on a book on the supports of a chair.The coins were launched from one of the color circles with a button. The button flew from the color circle down into the bowl. This game was the most popular.

If you do try any of the learning games for kids above, please leave me a comment below telling me about it  or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.