Rainbows, Color, and Light

It was an exciting week for our super scientists as we began our new science unit. After reading Don Freeman's A Rainbow of My Own about a boy who imagines what it would be like to have his own rainbow, we used the chart below to record what we think we know about rainbows and started a listed of "I Wonder" questions to help get our science investigations underway! We will continue to add questions and confirm or adjust some of our thinking as we learn more about rainbows, color, and light.

During our first investigation, we used a flashlight and a prism to produce a rainbow. The class did a great job discussing and describing their observations, and they were surprised that the rainbow we saw on our wall was a straight line--not curved like the rainbows we see in the sky! The children were also curious about why the rainbow we saw was not in the direction we were pointing the flashlight. After some great discussion, we learned that light can bend, or refract, when passing through clear objects like a prism and can separate into the colors of the rainbow. Check out our observations below!

February 8-12

This week in science the children had a blast learning about primary and secondary colors while mixing paint and making playdough. We even learned about making tints and shades by adding white or black to our paint.

Take a peek at our slideshow below to see our scientists in action!

February 15-19
Our scientists explored hidden colors and learned about light and shadows this week. We learned that you need a source of light in order to make a shadow.

No light...no shadow

When the light shines on an object,
the object blocks the light and we see a shadow.

Our predictions and observations

Click the picture below to play a shadow game. Make sure you click on the "outside" button to see how the position of the sun changes a shadow!

We also used Mr. Sketch markers to see if we could find hidden colors. Since we learned that the secondary colors (orange, green, and purple) were made by combining some of the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), we wanted to see if we you could separate out some of these colors. Using a set of colored markers, coffee filters, and a spray bottle we were able to conduct an experiment and confirm some of our predictions. Take a peek at our findings below!

Before

After coffee filters were sprayed with water

Primary colors--little to no change

Secondary colors--we saw some red separating out from the purple, yellow and blue separating from the green, and some read and yellow hiding in the orange.

A closer look at green

We found lots of hidden colors in the black marker!

February 22-26

This week we spent some time exploring bubbles. We talked about what we thought we knew about bubbles and then took a closer look at some photographs of bubbles. We noticed that bubbles are often colorful, especially when you blow them outside in the sunlight. We had fun blowing our own bubbles in the classroom while we search for different colors of the rainbow!

Bubble Experiment from Kathy Riesing on Vimeo.

We also revisited our thinking chart as we started to wrap up our study of Rainbows, Colors, and Light. We added our new learning to the chart and talked about some of the changes we made to our original thinking. Next week we will add some of the new things we are wondering about!

February 29-March 4

We wrapped up our Rainbows, Color, and Light science unit this week by talking about our "new wonderings." Many children were wondering why rainbows in the sky are curved, and some students wanted to know why the area inside a rainbow looks brighter than the outside. What great thinking!