Colors: Rainbow Droplets

 

Today's Snack: Multicolor fruit snacks often come in rainbow colors. See "rainbow order," below. Take time to help your child put a serving of fruit snacks in "rainbow order," THEN eat!

 

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Eyedropper

Small containers of water (clear, or washed-out yogurt cups work well)

Other containers

Food coloring

Blank copy paper

Washable markers

Paint shirt

 

 

            Here's a way to teach a small child about the colors and stay entertained for quite a while, just playing with colored water.

 

            Make sure to put a paint shirt on the child and protect chair cushions and countertops, and you do the mixing, since food coloring will stain fingers, clothes and everything in between. Once it's diluted in water, it's not as big a stain threat.

 

Prepare several small containers of water and let your child squeeze food coloring drop by drop into each one. Try to end up with the rainbow colors. Here they are, from the outside of a rainbow arch, inward:

 

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Indigo

Violet

 

Teach your child this mnemonic, pronounced "neh-MAHN-ik," which is a little ditty to help you memorize something. Rainbow order can be remembered by the made-up name

 

ROY G. BIV

 

Or by this silly sentence:

 

Ratting

On

Your

G rouchy

Brother

Is

Vile

 

(Vile means evil and you can remember that by just rearranging the letters in either word!)

 

Now have your child draw a rainbow with the markers, putting the colors in "rainbow order."

 

Invariably, small children ask what a rainbow is. So tell them that a rainbow is an arch of light that shows all the main colors in a particular order. It's caused by tiny drops of water falling through the air. It is best seen in the sky that is opposite to the sun at the end of a rainshower.

 

You will notice that the color red is on the outside, or top, of the arch. This is because when the sunlight shines through a raindrop, the sunlight is bent by that drop. When it's bent at just the right angle, and you are standing between the sun and the water, then you can see the different colors. The color red is bent the least, and that's why it ends up on top. The color violet is bent the most, and ends up at the bottom. The others end up somewhere in the middle.

 

Now let's make a rainbow! Have your child pick up colored water with the eyedropper and "paint" a rainbow in "rainbow order."

 

Then let your child have fun doing art work in any way he or she would like, mixing colors, and dropping water into other empty containers.