Making Rainbows

Kaitlyn has been learning about the weather in Science lately and one of the things we learned about was rain and rainbows. The Georgia Cyber Academy sent us all sorts of good stuff (for free because it's a public school) that we can use to better learn certain concepts. On the day that we learned about rain and rainbows we got to create our own rainbows using a mirror in water. We also made bubbles so that we could look at the tiny rainbows on the bubbles. Another part of the lesson was to make it "rain" by filling a cotton ball with droplets of water until it go so full that it started dripping or "raining". Lots of good hands on lessons. The best kind for little ones.

Here's how to make your own rainbow using a mirror in a bowl of water. You fill a large glass bowl with water then you put a mirror completely in the water. You take a peice of paper and move it around in front of the bowl until the light from the sun bounces off of the mirror in the water and reflects onto the paper. On the edge of the light being reflected, you will see a band of rainbow colors. You can tell your little scientist that rainbows are made when sunlight bounces off of droplets of water. (That's also why you can see rainbows in bubbles.)