On our walk back from the library this week we were very excited to spot not one but two rainbows. On Thursday this week we investigated are rainbows all around us?
We gathered together at Learning Challenge Headquarters to discuss this big question. The children talked about how they thought rainbows are made.
Some children suggested that rainbows are made from the rain, others thought it had something to do with a sunny day. Some children even thought it was unicorns magical horns that created the rainbows!
We talked about the weather on Tuesday and how this might have helped to create the rainbows we saw.
We watched a science clip that introduced us to the idea that the lights we see are made up of all of the colours, but when it is bent the colours appear.
We were introduced to the scientific word ‘refraction’ – how light can be bent as it passes through another object causing the spectrum of colours to appear.
The children were then challenge to answer the questions Can you find the colours of the rainbow in our garden? Can we see a rainbow? Can you make a rainbow?
Some children went in to the garden to investigate the colours in the natural world around us. They collected samples from the garden and compared them to the colours of the rainbow. They then explored what colours they could extract from these natural things.
Other children were very excited to use torches and CDs to explore light refraction. they were amazed to see the colours appearing in the reflective surface. The children noticed that by moving the torch they could change the shape and strength of the colours.
Some children chose to investigate how they can combine paints to make new colours to create a rainbow.
We finished our investigation by once again gathering together to review our activities. We found that some of the colours in the rainbow are around us in our garden and one child was even able to say that the colours in the garden change over the year. The children who investigated making their own colours of the rainbow were able to talk about how they combined the colours. The children who investigated can you see a rainbow, explained how they were able to bend the light to create rainbows. We are now waiting for a beautiful sunny day to investigate if we can bend the light with water in the garden.
