I have come across many different educational uses for those FREE, multi-colored paint samples you can take from home improvement stores. I recently found a square, one-color sample that I used to make dice (see photo above). The dice could be used in math (ex. put all the dice in a bag and have a student draw 2 out at a time; ask the student to add them or multiply them) or in other subjects for games, etc. I punched out holes from another colored sample to make the dots, but an easier way would be to use circle/dot stickers.
A cool use for the multi-colored sample gradients that I came across during a reading workshop was to practice vocabulary building/synonyms in a sense. If you give a child a blank colored sample and an adjective, such as "happy," the student starts at the lighter color and writes a word that means lightly or very mildly happy, such as "glad" or "content"...building as the color gets the darkest to a word like "ecstatic"or "euphoric" - differentiate this activity for various grade levels easily, by providing a word bank for students or using the 4 color sample vs. the 6 color sample.