Making Rainbows

Years ago I was at a meeting where a PBS representative came and gave us their “Ready to Learn” presentation. As part of the goodie bags they handed out there was a fridge magnet that pointed out that parents are supposed to watch the PBS shows with their kids, read books with their kids related to the topics they watched, and then do an activity with their kids related to that topic. They gave several examples using different clips from different shows. That magnet has been on my fridge ever since. The “watch, read, do” combination isn’t that hard to do and it helps kids make connections to their lives. A key aspect of it though is parents need to be involved in all three parts.

I don’t consciously plan to “watch, read, do” with Iddo, but sometimes it just happens all too perfectly. Back in April an episode of Sesame Street that we watched had them talking about rainbows, the colors in a rainbow and how to make one. Iddo wanted to make her own rainbows. We had “Mix It Up” by Herve Tullet checked out from the library and we’d read it a few times. We read it again. And then we watched this Sesame Street clip several times as well.

After that it was time to get out our paints. I only pulled out the red, yellow, and blue colors and we started by mixing up a rainbow pallet on our plate. Once we’d mixed our three primary colors to form the three secondary colors she used her fingers and thumbs to paint rainbows. She still likes talking about what you get when you mix different colors, although most of her combinations would result in brown.

To round out our “April Showers” art theme for the month, Shimri and Shimei got to get some blue ink on their fingertips and then smack a paper to make rain drops. I drew a grey rain cloud at the top for them.