I think every home should have a prism or two. Prisms break our normal white light into a band of rainbow colors known to scientists as the color spectrum or the visible spectrum. In plain language – they make rainbows. Older kids may be ready for a science lesson, but all kids will be fascinated by the rainbows they can create.
We have four prisms. We have two inexpensive prisms that can be moved, or taken outside. We have two crystal prisms that hang from our kitchen window. The morning light makes rainbows on our kitchen walls, which never fails to enchant all of us. We’ve often held the prisms in the afternoon light too, the children like to chase the rainbows around the room. , but a glass of water will also work if you place it in a sunny window. The prisms, or the water, cause the light to bend. This bending is called refraction.
You can memorize the color bands in the rainbow by memorizing the phrase Roy G. Biv – which stands for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Or you could make up a silly sentence like “rotten oranges yelp….” Not all light will have the same amounts of each color. Sunlight has about the same amounts of each of the rainbow colors, but fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs have different amounts of color. If you place a piece of white paper under your rainbow, you can capture the colors with crayons or colored pencils.
We also have a couple of favorite books about rainbows. The Rainbow Goblins is about evil goblins who steal colors from the world. I love this book, and the illustrations are very well down, but a little spooky. Our all time favorite rainbow book is A Rainbow of My Very Own by Don Freeman. It’s a lovely story of a child playing with a rainbow. And of course, there’s the bible story of Noah. We like Jan Brett’s version.
Have fun on the next sunny day, chasing some rainbows.
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