rainbows and weather

Since almost every class I teach reports on the weather in their classroom, it makes a great introduction to this weather unit. When I ask 'What IS weather?', I get the weather report! "Sunny", "Cold", Raining","Windy", and so on. Why do we need to know what the weather is like? Well, wearing the right clothes is important for them, but I decided to show them how weather predictions can save lives, not just make us comfortable. Weather can be scary stuff so I started with the book 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' by Judi Barrett.


We then read a weather book about rainbows. This generated a lot of interest, the children telling me where and when, and if, they had ever seen a real rainbow, i.e. a weather-related one arcing across the sky. Some children had witnessed one from an airplane window, another child reported seeing them when they played in the sprinkler on a sunny day. I gave each child a triangular prism and they looked through these to try and see rainbows around the edge of the fluorescent lights. I then shone a flashlight through the prism to get a rainbow effect on a piece of white paper beneath. This was not as successful as I had planned, so I substituted 'rainbow viewers'.

here's lookin at you...

These are colored discs that look like the colored irises in our eyes, but instead of a black pupil there was an etched piece of plastic that refracted the light around any object they looked at - these were wildly successful. Even the 2's could use them.

Most of the children could identify some rainbow hues, many correctly and in order. We tried to sort pompoms  into rainbow order. One of the students found a unique way to do this with  markers.

rainbow pompoms

cool way to arrange markers in rainbow order

Finally the children drew a rainbow for their journals. Sounds easy but actually getting the arch right is a real fine motor skill, hence the freeform nature that resulted - but who cares when the colors are so wonderful!