For those of us with younger children, taking a walk around our locality is a great opportunity for learning – so much to see and talk about! In our village at the moment we are spotting rainbows in windows and playing with rainbow toys!
Counting and naming the colours in the rainbow is a great start for any youngster. This Rainbow Tunnel Toy is lovely and tactile and a great talking point for when there isn’t a rainbow in the sky! You get to sing the song (do red and yellow and pink and green, orange and purple and blue really make a rainbow?) and can discuss the shape (it is half a circle, a semicircle. If there was no land in the way, would it be a full circle?).
A little bit of science here - a rainbow is formed when light shines through water! Ok, there’s a more to it than that (this vid from the Met Office explains it quite clearly) but you can make your own! There are some super ideas in the Rainbow Lab! There are some great discussion points here for your older children – Why is the red always on the top? Why is the rainbow always on the other side of the sky to the sun? What else is there around the house that could act as a prism?
Rainbow is a compound word which is two words joined together to make a new word. The word rainbow comes from the Old English word ‘regnboga’- ‘regn’ meaning ‘rain’ and ‘boga’ meaning ‘anything bent or arched’. You can imagine Anglo Saxons looking at the sky and realising that they saw the boga only after regn! There are lots of compound words around the house and garden. Do you have a goldfish? Read the newspaper? Can you hear a blackbird? Finding as many as possible and working out how they got their names is a lot of fun!
Rainbow Toys are a really bright and cheerful addition to the house! We love to make things in rainbow colours - my daughter still has a troupe of rainbow coloured dinosaurs on her window sill which she made from air drying clay and painted when she was about 6! I love this Rainbow Origami set as even I am able to make something from it!
We love a scavenger hunt in our house. How many things of each colour of the rainbow can you find around the house (from experience, a quick discussion on privacy is good here as my children will take any opportunity to get into each other’s bedrooms)? Can you make the biggest rainbow ever using all you have found? If you have children who like a bit of healthy competition, see who can find the most or biggest or strangest object in each colour. Make it super tricky – can they collaborate to find something of every letter of the alphabet but only in one of those seven colours?
How do you remember the colours of the rainbow? My way has always been Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. Why not make a mnemonic phrase of your own to help you remember? We’d love to hear them! 
Rainbow History - The Richard Of York who Gave Battle In Vain was most likely Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York (1411 – 1460) (interesting read here)
by Allie White, educational consultant to BrightMinds
As a parent and former-teacher, Allie has a hands-on approach to home learning, believing that the best learning is done together in a relaxed environment. Coming from a make-do and mend background, she likes to create activities for her children that use things already in the home.
Our mission at BrightMinds is to foster “a brighter way to play” to inspire your child to be curious about the world around them & encourage creativity in a fun & relaxed way.
We curate a world-class range of educational toys, games, gifts & books which are good quality, safe and backed by our extraordinary customer service. Rainbow Toys are our speciality and a Rainbow Toy from BrightMinds is a wonderful gift for your special boy or girl. Backed by our 90 day guarantee we are the number one site for thoughtful toys for kids!
