A Rainbow-licious Experiment and More!

Hi friends! I gotta show some remaining cool rainbow stuff we've done this last week or so.

We went outside in our beautiful Texas weather to make some real rainbows using a clear container and mirror. I know many of you are still buried under snow. Please don't hate us for our nice weather. Remember come a couple months from now we will be scorching in our brutal Texas summer (which surely can be equated to the depths of hell in July and August :)

Even my teens were outside excited to capture a mysterious rainbow. I will say it was easier to find the rainbow than to photograph them.... so the pictures don't do them any justice. For anyone doing a nonfiction rainbow unit, this activity is a MUST-DO!

It was fun to find the rainbows... a bit of trial and error but everyone was so intent on finding one, they were definitely engaged.

To do this just fill a clear glass/container 3/4 full with water. Slip a small mirror into the container and place in direct sunlight. Again, the rainbows we saw were really neat, but it's kind of hard to see in the pictures above. :)

I also found this great "indoor rainbow" experiment at TurtleDiary. It's give a great animated demonstration of creating a rainbow in a darkened room. Check it out HERE. They actually have a number of neat kindergarten-level experiments there. :)

We also did a "Milky Rainbow" experiment as well. This one is SO SO SO cool!

We use 3 simple ingredients.

*cream (but whole milk works fine)

*food coloring (yellow, blue, and red)

*dish soap

Pour 1 cup of milk or cream in a paper plate. Drop 10 drops of yellow, 5 drops of blue, and 5 drops of red. Place the drops near the center, but not touching. 

Place 1 drop of dish soap in the middle of the colors. You will see a color explosion. It's really cool! Not only with the color shoot out in all directions, you will see the primary colors mix and create the secondary colors without any help from you. Remember, we only used red, yellow, and blue. But, we got pink, purple, green, and more..... 

Of course, after the activity is finished - it's also a great opportunity to mix and see what colors you get!

Reagan was amazed that all the beautiful colors mixed to create a yucky brown color... YUCK!

Here's a video of our experiment:

)

Here is the video we used to do this experiment. This video does a great job showing and explaining what happens and why. 

)

Here's a peek into some more fun we had this week learning about rainbows and their colors. We use my Roy G. Biv and the Rainbow pack. You can get it on TpT HERE! 

and yummy Skittle graphing!!