The Rainbow Game

The teddy bears haven't been able to get out in the garden very much this week because of all the rain. But today, the sun shone and the grass was dry enough to walk (and run!) on.

They decided it had been a long time since they had played one of their favourite games in the garden.

It is a game which they can also play when they are out for a walk in the countryside, or they are down at the beach, just so long as they have 2 very important things with them. One is a drawing of a rainbow with all of the colours filled in. The other is a matchbox each.

The colours of the rainbow are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo (a sort of dark purple) and Violet. All rainbows have the same colours and in the same order. If you need help trying to remember the order of the colours, just remember this phrase instead: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain, and each of the initial letters of the words match the initial letters of the colours! Simple!

(You can read more about rainbows in one of the bears' previous stories here).

The idea of the game is to find things in their garden (or wherever the bears are) which will fit into their matchboxes and which match the colours of the rainbow. So they need to find 7 items, one in each of the colours of the rainbow.

The rainbow diagram is used to check that the items they choose are the nearest in colour as they can be to the diagram - the bears get higher points for items that match exactly.

They give themselves a time limit - usually no more than 30 minutes - and then they check off all their items and award points for each item and its colour.

Sometimes this is a more difficult game to play in Winter than it is, for example, in Spring, but it is always very interesting, and makes the bears look at all the things around them much more closely so they can see exactly what colour they are!

You could play this game in your garden, or when you are out and about.

The bears try not to pull petals off flowers - there are usually enough strewn on the lawn for them to pick them up instead. If you are at the beach, you might find colourful seashells or stones instead. Have fun!