Noticing the Rainbow Around Us – Celebrating All the Colors!

June 24, 2013 by Abi Craig 3 Comments

Summer hit and we aren’t following a school routine, so it has taken us a couple weeks to make a few rainbow projects happen.  Most of our adventures seem to involve food, art and books!

We made a Rainbow Salad for supper one night; the whole thing was delicious!

Of course you have lots of other veggie options if you make one for yourself.  We choose the following:

RED – red pepper

ORANGE – shredded carrot

YELLOW – roasted golden beets (milder than red beets, roasting heightens the sweetness and no staining involved!)

GREEN – lots of lettuce underneath it all, but we like seeds in our salad, so pepitas make the green arc

BLUE – it might look white, but if you smelled it you’d know that it is blue cheese for sure

PURPLE – diced “red” cabbage and onion

Rainbow Fruit Kebabs were a fun addition to our Sunday supper snack one evening.

Again, you have a bunch of options.  We had available:

RED – red delicious apples

ORANGE – peaches (the skin was sort of orange)

YELLOW – pineapple (fresh or canned would work; I had some dried that we used)

GREEN – kiwi

BLUE – blueberries (I forgot to look for fresh ones at the store, so we had to make due with our frozen ones; they were the tiny wild kind and didn’t want to stay on the skewers very well!)

PURPLE – grapes

If you need rainbow craft ideas, check here and here.  Both sites have lots of incredible ideas.  We (I) chose a simple painting project that repurposed the watermelon (rinds) we enjoyed on Father’s Day!  (I trimmed the bite marks off so we could have pretty, even arcs.)  Since I buy paint in large squeeze containers I’m always looking for something to dispense it onto for use in projects.  I cut open a thick paper bag to use this time.

I really like the finished result.  They make a good replacement for the faded poinsettias that were still over the coat pegs until earlier this week!  We do need different red paint though . . . our new bottle dries pink!

BOOKS – These are in no particular order and represent a huge variety of ways to explore and enjoy God’s amazing colors.  I find new ones each time I go to the library, so the list has gotten rather long.  Our favorites are starred.

**Red-Yellow-Blue: Colors in Art by Silke Vry  A fascinating history of color in art with interactive projects and puzzles.

**Growing Colors by Bruce McMillan  Vibrant pictures of fruits or vegetables on their own and as they grow.

Color by Ellen Lawrence  Fun, simple experiments for experiencing color.

Light and Color by Malcolm Dixon and  Karen Smith  Explores the science of light and color with short explanations and projects.

A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni  A chameleon explores colors while trying to figure out which one identifies.

Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary by Julie Larios illustrated by Julie Paschkis  Bright illustrations of animals accompany poems about animals in imaginative and realistic colors.

**Kitten Red Yellow Blue by Peter Catalanotto  Mrs. Tuttle keeps track of each kitten by the colored collar it wears.  The colors correspond to the profession of the person to whom the kitten belongs.

Red Green Blue by Alison Jay  Colors are seen and illustrated by common nursery rhymes though the rhymes themselves aren’t printed in the book.

Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman  A unique exploration of how various colors are experienced throughout the year.

Patrick Paints a Picture by Saviour Pirotta  Patrick learns to what colors to mix together to create other colors while painting a picture with his aunt.

Marcos Colors by Tomie dePaola  Simple board book to introduce names of colors in Spanish.

**Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh  A fun color mixing book.

All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka  Not rainbow colors, but we still celebrate them everyday.

The Deep Blue Sea by Audrey Wood  Each page of the story adds a new color until a rainbow appears at the end.

OTHER IDEAS

My Color Friends – I haven’t gotten to see any of these in person yet, but they look like fun.  A family who travels the world has put together some books that illustrate individual colors with photographs they’ve taken during their travels.  The books are available on Kindle and in print.

Here is a week long unit study based on Margaret Wise Brown’s The Color Kittens from DerivingMommyhood.  I was surprised and disappointed that our library did not have this book.  I like the absorption color wheel idea.  I hope to adventure into color mixing with the little ones in the next couple weeks.