Rainbows

“Inquiry ... requires more than simplyanswering questions or getting a rightanswer. It espouses investigation,exploration, search, quest, research,pursuit, and study. It is enhanced by involvement with a communityof learners, each learning from theother in social interaction.” 

- Capacity Building Series (May 2013)

We have continued our learning about rainbows by reading a variety of books, looking at different pictures and watching videos. Students have been curious about the colours of rainbows so we began exploring colour. They investigated how colours mix and what happens when we mix primary and secondary colours together.

Mixing primary colours using marbles

D.K- "look, I see green!"

Mixing secondary colours together with a marble

We used food colouring and water to find out what would happen when we mix the primary colours!

Students said "look we made a rainbow! It should start with red!"
They then reorganized the colours to start with red.

Students wrote about our experiment during Thinking and Learning time.

We did a milk experiment (click here for previous post) using food colouring, milk and dish soap. This was another way for us to see how the primary colours mixed together and what happened.

Students had many discussions around colours and how colours made them feel. We discussed why colours make us feel different emotions.

E.M. - black is a bad colour!

Ms. Tompkins- why?

E.M- because black is a very dark colour, it’s not a good colour, it’s very dark and very black, because its for rainstorms and things, the clouds turn black and then they make rainstorms, thats why black is a bad colour.

Z.H- black is not a bad colour, because if you mix all the colours together you get black 

Ms. Tompkins- what colours make you feel happy?

C.C- red! Playing with a red toy

A.A- purple, because I love purple because it’s violet

D.K- green, blue, red, black, they make me happy because green is like green grass on a summer day, blue is like rain, and red is like the hot sun when you get very close into it and black it makes happy because the dark out (the black out) I liked it because I got to go to my Opa and Oma’s house. 

K.B- I like the colour blue, because I like swimming in the blue water

E.K- red, and blue and yellow are happy 

A.Bh- when I look up at the sky the blue makes me happy because God made the whole planet and I like blue because God lives in blue

M.P- green, because my room is green 

Students have been finding rainbows all around!

Students discovering the overhead created a rainbow on the ceiling!

E.M. found when the sun hit the magnifying glass it made a rainbow!

T.K. made a rainbow out of markers

We have learned about double rainbows and shared our theories on why there are two. The quality of conversations has been truly amazing!

A.L- we see two rainbows!

S.P- I know why it’s like that, because the rainbow is reflecting and making another rainbow

A.B- one is light and one is dark

A.L- when the sun shines the when the rain is gone and the sun shines there is a rainbow

M.W- they are secondary and primary colours and they are in a pattern!

D.S- rainbows have lots of colours, they have 7 colours because rainbows are really big

D.K- rainbows get made from rain and the sunlight after when it rains and the sun is out and the light comes form the sun hits the raindrop, the normal light will goes to the raindrop. A rainbow will come out of normal light.

D.D- sometimes rainbows appear!

A.A- we talked about one rainbow, can we jump on the rainbow?

A.Bh- when the rain goes down the water can go in the air, when the sun goes in, the rainbow changes into different colours

At the beginning of our inquiry, I set up a provocation (an invitation for learning) about rainbows. The students began sorting coloured beads. Through a conversation with a few of the SK girls, we decided to make a rainbow out of the beads using wire. Over the past month, the students have been sorting the beads to prepare for the creation of the rainbow for our classroom. The result is beautiful!

Students began working together to create the rainbow by beading each colour.

The finished product! The students have decided to hang it in the window, so make sure to keep an eye out when you're walking by!