It was an exciting week for our super scientists as we began our new science unit! We used the chart below to begin our learning about rainbows, color, and light. We recorded what we think we know about rainbows and then started a list of "I Wonder" questions to help get our science investigations underway! We will continue to add questions and confirm and adjust our thinking as we learn more about rainbows, color, and light!
After reading Don Freeman's A Rainbow of My Own about a boy who imagines what it would be like to have rainbow of his own, we tried to make a rainbow of our own using a prism and a light source. The class did a great job discussion and describing their observations, and they were surprised that the rainbow we saw on our whiteboard was a straight line--not curved like rainbows we see in the sky! After some great discussion, we learned that white 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!
This week in science we learned more about light and color. We learned that we need our eyes and a source of light to see color. We took a closer look at our own eyes and completed three investigations to answer the following questions:
1) What do our eyes really look like?
2) How do our eyes react to light and dark?
3) Can we see color in the dark?
Through our experiments and thinking about the information presented in the book Look at Your Eyes, we learned that:
The pupils in our eyes act like windows that open and close to let light in and to protect our eyes. During our experiment, we learned that our pupils get very large in the dark so that more light can get into our eyes to help us see. When the lights are bright, our pupils get smaller to keep too much light from entering our eyes. Check us out in action below!
Super Scientists from Kathy Riesing on Vimeo.
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| Picking a crayon in the dark and guessing its color. |
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| Making our predictions and then finding out what color crayon we really picked! |
The children had a blast learning about primary and secondary colors while mixing paint and making playdoh. We even learned about making tints and shades of color by adding white and black to our paint. We also used sheets of cellophane and our overhead projector to see what happens when we mix different colors of light.
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| We saw some blue separating from the green and the purple. It's hard to tell from the picture, but we saw yellow separating out from the orange. We found LOTS of colors hidden in the black marker! |
Our scientists explored light and shadow this week. We learned that you need a source of light in order to make a shadow.
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| No light...no shadow! |
We also spent some time exploring our own shadows. We went outside first thing in the morning to take a peek at our shadows and then again at the end of the morning to see how our shadows changed. We learned that in the morning our shadows were much longer because the sun was lower in the sky at our backs, but later in the day when the sun was shining down above our heads, our shadows were much shorter. Take a peek at our findings below!
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| 9:15 AM Shadow vs. 11:15 AM Shadow |
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| 9:15 AM |
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| 11:15 AM |
We also spent some time exploring rainbow effects. We noticed that we could see rainbows using several different objects. We saw a rainbow on the back of a CD, on our whiteboard using a prism, and we talked about many other places we see rainbows such as in the sky and when blowing bubbles. Then we made our own bubbles and searched for rainbows in the bubbles we blew. If you could have heard all the squeals as bubbles floated through the air in our classroom!
This week we wrapped up our Rainbows, Color, and Light Unit by revisiting our thinking chart and making tissue paper stained glass windows. It was great to listen to all of the comments students made about their learning as well as what other concepts they are still wondering about. We had a great time making stained glass windows too. They look awesome hanging in front of our classroom windows!
We have started collecting weather data as we prepare for our Tracking the Weather science unit. As part of this yearlong unit, we will collect information about the weather each day and then compare our data from season to season. Take a peek below to see some of our science explorations and the data we collected for September!
Searching for Signs of Fall
Our September Weather Data
This week we had a special visitor from the district office, Mrs. Satera, come in for Make a Difference Day to help us learn more about clouds and weather. After listening to Little Cloud by Eric Carle, we learned a little more about what clouds are made of and why clouds sometimes appear dark. Then we took a walk outside to check the sky for clouds and recorded our findings in our science journals. Click here to learn more about the reasons why clouds sometimes appear dark in the sky!
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