Somewhere over the rainbow...

Spring has sprung (finally!) and a lot of exciting things are unfolding in our classroom! To provide you with some context of where we are now, I'd like to highlight where we started from over a month ago whereby our students had shown a profound interest in putting on "plays." In order to honour their interests, we worked with our students to help rearrange our learning space to provoke and support their curiousity by turning one area of our classroom into a puppet theatre! After much excitement and many celebrated performances, a few students realized that we didn't have a name for our theatre! After a small group of students brainstormed some possibilities, one SK student (E.S.) decided to create a survey and collect data from her peers around what we should name our theatre based on the four collected names. 

Little did we know, that the winning name itself would shift their gears to begin inquiring about a completely new topic! "Rainbow 126" was the most popular name voted on and that has now opened the doors to our students wonderings about rainbows!

Here are a some of our colourful theories:

What does a rainbow look like?

It looks kind of like a semi-circle because a semi-circle really looks like a rainbow because it’s half of a circle. - D.K. (SK)

A rainbow is like this (makes an arch motion). It’s good because then it’s like a slide and maybe you can sleep on it! - R.V. (JK)

To make a rainbow, you need water because the word “rain” is in rainbow! 

- T.B. (SK)

I see that when rain comes you see a rainbow! It looked like there was red, orange, yellow, green, blue and pink! - J.Si. (SK)

Where do we see rainbows?

We see rainbows when there’s lots of rain and when the rain stops. We see it start on the ground and it reflects on the sky. “Reflects” means that the same things goes on that one thing. - D.K. (SK)

One time, I saw a water sprinkler and then the sun comes out and then I saw a rainbow you know? - Z.P. (SK)

I saw a rainbow in my cousin’s house. I saw it in the washroom and I caught it and then it got out of my hand. When the sun went away the rainbow did too. But then I found it again when the light comes back. - M.D. (JK)

In the sky where the sunlight is! Rainbows don’t live inside our house. Rainbows can shine on people you know? I was driving in my car and I saw it in the sky! 

-R.V. (JK)

Sometimes where it’s a beautiful rainy day and when it stops raining a rainbow appears. It looks like a beautiful rising colours in the sky! - C.S. (JK)

In the sky! It has to be day time because the sun helps and you can’t see a rainbow in the dark. - R.K. (SK)

Can you catch a rainbow?

When you touch a rainbow, it goes on your hand. It just feels like air so you can’t slide down because you’ll fall. It’s too high and there’s no oxygen there. 

- E.Sz. (SK)

No it’s because rainbows disappear after a long time and they come back when the rain stops. - R.K. (SK)

I think you can’t because rainbows are too big to get in a net and you can’t really hold a rainbow. When you touch a rainbow your hand goes right through it! It’s made of air too. - D.K. (SK)

I think it’s made out of sunlight. - S.R. (JK)

Rainbows are nothing but colours in the air. - T.L. (SK)

Some of our wonderings...

I wonder if rainbows fade and disappear? - M.P. (SK)

I wonder how the colours pop out? 

- E.S. (SK)

I wonder where rainbows come from? 

- J.H. (SK)

I wonder how a rainbow is born? 

- C.S. (JK)

I wonder why rainbows have different colours? - J.Sa. (SK)

To fast-forward a few weeks, our class has been actively engaged as Scientists as we continue to generate new theories, pose and answer our wonderings and collect information based on our discoveries and our own experiences with rainbows! Stay tuned for a post that highlights our first of many rainbow experiments!