Rainbow Toast {Painting Bread}

When the girls saw Rainbow Toast in their Highlights High Five Magazine (back-issue from 2007 from Ebay), they begged me to let them try it out... so we did!  This activity was a great way to make a snack using all sorts of Montessori practical life skills and creativity.  Here's how to do it..

Since we're doing lots of activities based on books in March for National Reading Month, I integrated our bread painting activity with the book Bread and Jam for Frances by Russel Hoban.  It's a really cute book about a girl (badger) who prefers bread and jam over trying different foods until her mother teachers her a little lesson.  Originally I was planning on letting the kids spread jam on bread shapes (cut out using cookie cutters) for this activity, but I think rainbow toast turned out to be more fun..

 

For this activity, all you need is some milk, liquid or gel food coloring, sliced bread, and some Q-tips or paint brushes.  I invited the kids to pour a bit of milk into each cup.  I put a tiny drop of food coloring into each cup and asked them to mix it into the milk using a Q-tip.

Painting on the bread, of course, was the best part.  The girls took their time and experimented with different techniques and with mixing up the various colors.  They were very proud of their colorful masterpieces (even though I have to admit that it reminded me of moldy bread).

The kids were eager to eat their bread creation, but I somehow managed to convince them to let me toast it first (I love how the bread in the photo has already been nibbled on!).  I toasted the bread in a frying pan with a bit of butter, and the toasting really brought out the colors (it's hard to see how vivid it was in the photos).

I invited the girls sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on their toasts.

The snack that resulted was a big success:

Both girls finished their toast, even E who generally doesn't like bread.  This was a really neat snack-time activity.


This post is part of our National Reading Month celebration where we try to do a book-related activity every day in March.  To get more updates on what we're up to, please follow Learners in Bloom: