NSTA Standards
Students should understand the basic characteristics of the atmosphere, weather and climate; know that changes in the atmosphere result in weather and climate; have practice in observation of weather phenomena, experimentation, data collection, and making inferences to test ideas; possess a weather vocabulary.
Key Concepts
When there is rain and sunshine at the same time, we often see a rainbow. The colors of the rainbow are always in the same order. We can use a mnemonic device to remember the colors of the rainbow.
Teaching Ideas and Tips
Print copies of Rainbows: A Reading Comprehension Passage with Questions
Print Spring & Summer – Rainbow.
You may also want to do the art activity that is on page 2.
Classroom Management
Even though students can remember the colors of the spectrum in order, they often have difficulty remembering which color goes on the top of the arc. Ask your students which color they like the most, red or violet. USUALLY more students like red. If you are lucky and that is the case in your class, simply tell them that because most people prefer red, they should make the longest arc of the rainbow red.
Many of the reproducible pages that are available for students have only five or six arcs in the rainbow. Simply ask students to always add the necessary arcs so that they will always have room for seven colors.
Vocabulary
Rain – Rain is precipitation that is liquid and falls in droplets.
Sunshine – Sunshine is rays of heat and light from the sun.
Rainbow – A rainbow is an arc of light separated into bands of color. The rainbow colors are always in the same order beginning with red on the largest arc: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
Use this Weather Vocabulary list as a start—add more of your own—and use Make Your Own tools to create your own flash cards!
Printables Resources
Rainbow Graph (Skill: Collecting information and interpreting a graph) NOTE: This activity uses only six colors on the rainbow.
Rainy Day Sound Effects (Skill: Writing poems with sounds – using a word bank)
Flash cards (Skill: Review weather term definitions)
Weather Watchers (Skill: Review weather term definitions)
Weather Words (Skill: Use consonant clues to read weather terms)
Word search (Skill: This is an advanced word search)
Word search (Skill: Very easy word search)
Weather Symbol Cards (Good for bulletin board, calendar activities or tracking the weather)
In Warm Weather: Draw and Write (Skill: Writing about warm weather)
Umbrellas reproducible border for bulletin board
Sunny Subtraction (Skill: Subtraction practice)
Sunny Addition (Skill: Addition practice)
Weather Activities: Lesson plan for making a cloud and learning about wind
Library Books: The Rainbow Fish (Skill: Reading comprehension and dot-to-dot activity)
Lance’s Rainbow (Skill: Sequencing events)
Rainbow Reproducible Border (Stationery)
Assessment
On a sheet of plain white drawing paper, ask your students to write the name that will help them remember the colors of the rainbow in order. Then allow them to use crayons (or water colors if you are brave and want the illustrations more authentic) to create a rainbow on the page. Ask them to print the names of the colors beside or on each arc. Give credit for the following elements: having all seven colors, for having the colors in order, for having the red at the top of the arc, for spelling ROY G. BIV correctly, and for spelling the names of the colors correctly.
Send Home Letter
You may want to attach an assessment paper to this note so parents can see that the children have created a rainbow, learned the name ROY G BIV, and spelled the colors correctly. Write the letter on the stationery listed above or on other any other weather stationery you find.
Here are two versions of the same letter. In the first one, students would fill in the blanks before it goes home.
Try printing this send home letter on Weather Stationery. Or you can also print this letter on your own - copy/paste the letter below into a Microsoft Word document. You can add or remove text and customize the letter to your liking.
Dear Parents,
Our class has been studying weather and rain. We learned that if the sun is shining and there is rain, there is often a rainbow. To see the rainbow, we should ___________________________________________.
We also learned that the colors of the rainbow are always in the same order. To help us remember this, we learned the name ________________. The letters in this name stand for the colors of the rainbow. We will write them in order here: ____, _____, _____, _____, ____, _____, and ______. The widest arc of the rainbow is always _____.
We loved learning about rainbows and now we can’t wait to see one!
____________
Try printing this send home letter on Weather Stationery. Or you can also print this letter on your own - copy/paste the letter below into a Microsoft Word document. You can add or remove text and customize the letter to your liking.
Dear Parents,
Our class has been studying weather and rain. We learned that if the sun is shining and there is rain, there is often a rainbow. To see the rainbow, we should stand with our back to the sun and look in the sky.
We also learned that the colors of the rainbow are always in the same order. To help us remember this, we learned the name ROY G. BIV. The letters in this name stand for the colors of the rainbow. We will write them in order here: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The widest arc of the rainbow is always red.
We loved learning about rainbows and now we can’t wait to see one!
____________
Homework
Make copies of Cool Clouds for your students. Students will color the clouds different colors if the facts contained on them are fact or fiction. You may choose to use the words "real" and "pretend" if you wish.
Make copies of Wonderful Weather for your students. For homework, they will solve simple addition or subtraction problems to find weather words by using a code.
Make copies of Weather Crossword Puzzle as a homework assignment and a review of weather terms.
More to Explore
Instant Internet Activities
To see incredible photographs of rainbows and double rainbows go to: http://www.weatherpictures.nl/rainbow.html
To find weather poems from students of all ages, go to: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=weather+poems&go=&form=QBIR&qs=n&sk= Just click on these to enlarge and read. Try doing similar activities with your own students.
Follow-Up Activities:
What is Indigo and why is it a color of the rainbow? Most students have never heard of the color "indigo." Actually it is a color between blue and violet on the spectrum. Many color scientists do not recognize it as a separate division and classify it as just violet. (Look for "indigo" to be kicked off the rainbow just like Pluto is no longer a planet!)
You can see the color indigo by looking at the reflection of a florescent tube on the underside of a blank compact disc.
Challenge students to find out what "indigo" really is! (Indigo is a plant that is used in making blue dye.)
You may have to visit a teacher from grade four or five to find a prism in a science kit. Borrow several of these and allow your students to set the prism in sunlight and see the color spectrum.
Buy some "bubble stuff" and allow students to go outside and blow bubbles. Challenge them to determine if the colors in the bubbles are like the colors of the rainbow. Are they in an "arc?" Are they in the same order?
Make it rain in your classroom! Use Spring and Summer - Umbrella Lesson. On page 2 you will find directions for a simple experiment to show students what causes rain.
