If you have little ones with you at home, rainbow painter’s (masking) tape is an absolute must-have. I know, it seems like a really random item for me to be telling you to have on-hand but just trust me! There are so many great low-prep, purposeful learning activities that you can use this fun-colored tape for starting as early as 12 months old!

In this post, I’m going to focus on some of our favorite activities that we’ve used our colored tape for around the ages of 1-2. Many of these activities can also be done with older toddlers, or adapted for older ages, and this is just scraping the surface of the potential this sticky stuff has. I hope these ideas inspire you to get creative with your tape! Here are 8 of our favorite ways to use ours:

1. BALLS IN A MUFFIN TIN

This activity is fun for little ones even without the tape! Once your little one is starting to grow their vocabulary and they are showing interest in learning colors, add a small piece of tape to the bottom of each cup in a muffin tin, and grab some balls in the coordinating colors. The balls we used are from one of our beloved ball popper toys but I’ve seen some replacement sets occasionally on Amazon!

Even if your little one is not able to identify the colors, or match the colors quite yet, the fact that they are getting an opportunity to watch YOU do it, and hear you talk about the different colors is great exposure and how they will eventually learn to do it themselves.

Have your little one use some sort of a plastic scoop, or large serving/mixing spoon to work on scooping up one ball at a time, and transferring it into the muffin tin. Scooping and transferring is great for building hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, fine motor skills, and gross motor skills!

2. RAINBOW TAPE PULL

I love the simplicity of this activity. All you are doing to prep this one is tearing a few pieces of tape in each color in varied sizes and sticking them to a wall. Depending on the age and stage of your little one, you can leave one end of the tape sticking up a bit to make it easier for them to grab. If you think their fine motor skills are ready, press the tape all the way down and let them work at peeling it off!

You can have them gather it all up as they peel it off, or try re-sticking it to play again!

3. TAPED PUZZLE PIECES

Chunky puzzles like these are great on their own, but if you are looking to extend them a bit, or add some more fine motor work to them, use your painter’s tape to tape the pieces down to a cookie sheet! Kiddos can peel the tape off of each piece before finding its spot on the puzzle. We love this puzzle with the little pegs but also have a handful of this style which are awesome for small hands to work with!

Another fun and easy way to switch up puzzle play is to hide the pieces in a sensory bin! You can see an example of that here in this post!

4. STICKY EGG GRAB

This is an activity we did around Easter time using our plastic eggs. If you like the idea but feel like you can’t have plastic eggs out until it’s closer to Easter (I get it), then use plastic balls! I will say, the best part about doing this activity with the plastic eggs, however, is that you can put snacks/treats inside them! I added a yogurt melt or two inside each plastic egg which made the activity that much more engaging for my little guy!

I secured the tape with the sticky side facing down so that the eggs could be easily grabbed, and even stuck back up to play over and over again. To secure the tape this way, just use another piece of tape at each end.

5. COLORED TAPE MATCH

We did this activity using our learning journal! A learning journal is just a blank sketch notebook (this is our favorite one to use and I do feel it’s worth the extra money because the pages are so nice and thick!) that you can hand draw activities in for your little ones. We love this method for several reasons, one being that all activities are kept in one place (a fun keepsake to be able to look back on), you’re able to cater specifically to your child’s interests and needs, and it allows for some really sweet one-on-one learning time!

For this rainbow tape match activity, all you need to do to prep is draw different sized rectangles matching the colored tape (these are the markers I like to use for prepping journal activities). Tear the colored tape in sizes that match the rectangles and stick them to the table for your little one to pull and match! The sizes don’t have to match perfectly but I tried to do one small size and one big size for each color to keep the different sizes more obvious. With this activity, you are working on building new vocabulary such as the words “big” and “small,” and you’re also working on naming colors, matching colors, comparing sizes, spatial awareness, and fine motor skills!

6. COOKIE CUTTER TAPE TRAY

This activity is a similar idea to the taped puzzle pieces, minus the puzzle! If your little one isn’t quite ready to do puzzles yet, or isn’t showing interest in puzzles, this might be a good one for you to try. We used Christmas cookie cutters here since it was around the holidays but any plastic cookie cutters would do.

I liked using plastic cookie cutters for this activity because they were easy for my little guy to grab and grip off the cookie sheet. Keeping things nice and simple is a great way to set your little one up for success, making them more likely to be engaged and wanting to keep playing. All they are doing here is just pulling the cookie cutters off the tray. They can either peel the tape, or just yank the cookie cutters off. Depending on the shapes of your cookie cutters, you can build vocabulary by talking about what they are (ex: “good work, you rescued the SNOWMAN shape!”)

If your little ones like the idea of “rescuing” objects from the tape, they might want to try this one, too!

Toddlers and preschoolers can rescue zoo animals that are taped with painter's tape on a cookie sheet. This activity is great for building fine motor skills.

7. RAINBOW TAPE AND A LAUNDRY BASKET

This one is so random but SO fun! I wrapped rainbow colored tape sticky side up across a laundry basket. It was actually my 4 and 6 year olds who played with this activity but my youngest was 20 months at the time and ended up joining in as well. The big kids took turns tossing poms into the basket and gave themselves points each time they got one to stick (double points if the colors match)! My little guy played along by sticking the poms along the tape and pulling them off.

We also added some colored craft sticks to line up on the tape. Keep in mind that the poms can be a choking hazard for little ones so please always supervise and use your best judgment when it comes to the materials you use for activities with your children!

8. GOLD COIN TAPE PULL

This activity is similar to the puzzle piece and cookie cutter activities shared earlier in the post. We did this one around St. Patrick’s Day, hence the gold coins, but they were the perfect size to tape to an upside down muffin tin! If you don’t want to wait for St. Patrick’s Day, you could find some other small objects (but not too small) that would fit on the bottom of a tray like this. The gold coins were fun because I was able to add a mini cauldron for him to drop the coins in as he pulled them off.

Although there is a specific age range labeled on this post, please remember that the developmental stage your child is at, is way more important to consider than their actual age when determining what type of activities they are ready for. Use your best judgement and always supervise any activities that use small objects!

I hope this post leaves you inspired and excited about painter’s tape! ;) If you liked these ideas, be sure to follow along on Instagram @ohheyletsplay for daily learning activity ideas. You may also like these posts:

Activities for 12-18 Month Olds
Activities for 1-2 Year Olds
Activities for 2-3 Year Olds
Name Activities for Toddlers
Rainbow Activities for Toddlers & Preschoolers
4 Ways to Learn & Play with Mega Blocks

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