One of the favorite books for all of my toddlers over the years has been “Goodnight Moon”. The simple rhyming and repetition is calming for my little ones.
Abeka Curriculum
I was able to incorporate several of our Abeka nursery lessons into this unit as well. Following are some of the specific books with links that are used in this Farm Tot School Unit:
Today we talked about the science behind rainbows. We learned that all a rainbow needs is light and water so we went outside to try to create some or our own rainbows. Today we included more rainbow crafts, science, math, literature, and snacks.
What Makes a Rainbow
Discuss: A rainbow needs light and water for us to see it. Show a simple demonstration of how we bend light by using a straight straw and a clear cup that is half filled with water. Even though the straw is straight, it looks bent when we put it into the water. That is just the light bending. When we bend light, it is called “refraction.” Let’s bend some more light. Show the kids a prism, go outside and used a prism to create a rainbow on a piece of white paper. Why do we see rainbows when it rains? The raindrops are like a tiny prism, bending the light that comes from the sun. So we need both sun (light) and rain (prism) at the same time to make a rainbow in the sky. Let’s do a simple demonstration to see how the sun and water make a rainbow. We’ll use the hose in the backyard to make a rainbow. Make sure the sun is behind us and the water is in front of us.
Read: What Is a Rainbow? By Chris Arvetis and Carole Palmer
Comprehension Questions:
What makes a rainbow? Light and water
Fruit Loop Bagel Breakfast
Materials:
Plain Bagels
Cream Cheese
Fruit Loops
Directions:
spread cream cheese on the bagel
place the fruit loops in the shape of a rainbow
Tissue Paper Rainbow
Materials:
colors of tissue papers
pencil with a full eraser
school glue
white cardstock with an outline of a rainbow on it
markers or crayons
Directions:
Have the children use the markers or crayons to color in the colors they want their rainbow to look like.
Cut the tissue into 1 inch squares.
Pour some school glue onto a tray or plate.
Have your child take one piece of tissue, and show them how to center (approximately!) the eraser onto it.
Wrap the tissue up around the pencil.
Dip into the glue.
Hold onto the edges of the tissue, and press the glue tipped end onto the paper, matching up the color from your picture. Slide the pencil out.
Rainbow in a Box
Discuss: Like water drops in falling rain, the CD separates white light into all the colors that make up the rainbow. The colors you see reflecting from a CD are interference colors, like the shifting colors you see on a soap bubble or an oil spill. You can think of light as as being made up of waves-like the waves in the ocean. When light waves reflect off the ridges on your CD, they overlap and interfere with each other. Sometimes the waves add together to make a rainbow.
Materials:
CD
Box
Flashlight
Directions:
Shine a flashlight on an old CD in the bottom of a box turned on it’s side.
Turn off the lights, and move the flashlight across the CD to make the rainbows dance.
Rainbow Addition
Materials:
Paper
Pen
Construction paper
Directions:
Draw an outline of a rainbow on the paper.
Write addition combinations on the blank rainbow. (make sure they are spaced out quite a bit)
Cut the construction paper into rectangles small enough to cover one of the combinations.
Write the answers to the top row of combinations on the red rectangles.
Next row answers are on the orange rectangles. And so on.
Child will look at the combination and find the answer in the colored pieces and place it over the combination. At the end there should be a completed colored rainbow.
I modified the one for A. to counting dots on the white paper and finding the correct number on the colored pieces.
And I modified the tots to matching colors.
Eat the Rainbow
Discuss:
Talk about what different colors of the rainbow that we can eat to be healthy. Fruits and Vegies Then make a chart with the kids that have all of the foods that they suggested written on it.
Materials:
Posterboard
Markers of crayons
Strawberries
Cantaloupe
Banana
Pear
Blueberries
Red Grapes
Kabob Skewers
Directions:
Make a rainbow on a plate or platter with different fruits.
RED – Strawberries ORANGE – Cantaloupe YELLOW – Banana GREEN – Pear BLUE – Blueberries VIOLET – Red grapes
2. Let the children use the kabob sticks to make their rainbow fruit kabobs.
Read: I can eat a Rainbow by Annabel Karmel while they eat
Make a REAL Rainbow
Read: A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman
Discuss: Rainbows appear wherever sunlight falls on water or glass. We used the Rainbow Diagram here to help us with this experiment.
Materials:
Glass of water
Dark kitchen
White Paper
Masking Tape
Flashlight
Directions:
Fill a glass of water (almost to the top) and place it at the very edge of the counter in a VERY dark kitchen or bathroom.
Place a sheet of plain white paper on the floor a few inches away from the counter.
Put two pieces of masking tape over the front of a flashlight so that the light comes out of a slit about 1/8 inch wide.
Shine this light across and down into the water as shown in the figure. When a narrow beam of light is passed through a glass of water, a spectrum can be seen on a white sheet of paper.
Can you see a small rainbow on the white paper? If not, move the flashlight around a little until you achieve the best results.
Rainbow Symmetry
Discuss: A line of symmetry divides a shape into two identical parts. In some cases, as with a rainbow, you’ll find one line of symmetry down the middle. In other cases, there is more than one, like with eight sections of an orange. So if we paint a rainbow on one side of the paper and then fold it in half it should appear the same on both sides forming a symmetrical rainbow.
Materials:
Cardstock folded in half
Paint for all the colors of the rainbow
Directions:
Fold the paper in half and open.
Have the kids how to paint half a rainbow on one half of the paper in the right order.
Fold the paper over and press gently.
Open again to see your rainbow print.
IMG_0701
Rainbow Celebration Cake
Cake Materials:
White cake (2 boxes)
9 in. cake pan
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple GEL food coloring.
Cake Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Spray 9” cake pans. Make the 2 cakes according to the directions.
Divide the batter into 6 bowls (about 1 1/2 cups each.
Then whisk 2 drops of the appropriate food color into each bowl. Pour into the pans and bake for 12 minutes each.
When you remove them from the oven, let them rest on the cooling rack, in the pan, for ten minutes. Then flip, cover, and stash them in the fridge to cool quickly.
Frosting Materials:
2 Cups shortening
2 teaspoons vanilla
½ cup water
2 lbs. Powdered sugar
Frosting Directions:
In large bowl, cream shortening with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add water and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.
This icing can be stored 2 weeks. rewhip before using.
IMG_0680I added sugar sprinkles in the shape of a rainbow to it too.
Today we learned why we have rainbows. We reviewed the story of Noah’s Ark focusing on the end where they have the promise from God to never destroy the earth again with a flood. We played with some Noah’s Ark toys and did some Noah’s Ark Crafts.. We also has some more yummy rainbows and did some more science experiments (the kids favorite).
God’s Promise
Discuss: Genesis 9:13 “I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is a sign of my covenant with you and all the earth.”
After a year of floating, the ark was finally on dry ground. Just a few minutes before, it was filled with growling, barking, honking, purring animals. Now the giant boat sat on a mountain top with the door wide open, the boat was all empty and quiet. All the animals had rushed out the door to fill the earth again. So what was Noah doing? He was gathering rocks. He was so thankful to be alive, he was building an altar to God. So Noah piled up the rocks to build a fire on them. This was the sacrifice Noah offered to God to thank him for saving him and his family. God was pleased with Noah’s sacrifice. But most of all, God was pleased that Noah was truly thankful. So God made a promise to Noah, “Never again will I destroy the world with a flood. I make this covenant with you and with all creatures. From this day on, there will always come a time for planting, and a time for gathering up what was planted. Day will always follow night, the warm days of summer will always follow the cold and snow of winter, as long as the earth shall be.” So God blessed Noah and his family. He told them to have many children to fill the earth with people again. He gave them the plants and the animals for food. Then God said to Noah, “Look up in the sky.” Noah looked up. The bright sun was shining, God made a brilliant rainbow appear. God said to Noah, “You see, I have set my rainbow in the sky. This will be the sign of the covenant I have made with you and all creatures, never again to destroy the earth by a flood. It will always remind us of the promise between you and me.” So, the next time you see a rainbow, you can think of Noah and the flood. Remember that God loves you, and that no matter how bad the storm, there will always come a bright new day. That is God’s promise, and God always keeps his promises.
Read:The First Rainbow By Su Box
Comprehension Questions:
How many animals did God send to Noah on the ark? Two of every animal. (boy and girl)
What did God send as a promise to Noah after they got off of the ark? (A rainbow)
Noah’s Rainbow
Materials:
2 paper plates
paint
paintbrushes
Animals and Noah (I used some that I had from a coloring book)
Scissors
Glue
Directions:
First, cut one of the paper plates in half and let your child paint one piece brown.
Paint a rainbow on the top 3/4 of the other plate.
Color all of the Noah animals and cut them out.
Once everything is dry, staple the brown plate to the rainbow plate so that the rainbow is showing.
Noah’s Ark Play
Discuss: God sent the animals to Noah’s ark 2 by 2 (a boy and a girl).
Directions:
Set up the Little People Ark and put Noah on it.
Line up the animals outside the ark 2 by 2.
Children can count by 2’s to see how many animals are on this ark.
Noah’s Ark ABC Puzzle
We have a wooden Noah’s Ark puzzle that lines the animals up in ABC order.
Rainbow Lorikeet
Discuss:
This is truly where a picture is better than a thousand words. There intense colors have patches of emerald green, orange midnight blue, dull blue, ruby red,lemon yellow, purple, violet greenish gray. They are a small bird generally 11 to 12 inches long, on average females are generally a bit smaller and younger birds have duller markings. They are said to live over 20 years in the wild. Their vocalization is varied from “screeching” in flight to “chatting” during feeding.
Rainbow Bible Verse
Read and talk about the verse with your child. Have the child draw a rainbow over the verse with crayons.
“I have placed my
rainbow in the clouds.
It is a sign of my covenant
with you and all the earth.”
Genesis 9:13
IMG_0Youngest child’s on the bottom up to the oldest child’s!539
Rainbow Jello
Ingredients:
Jello for each color of the rainbow
Knox gelatin (6 envelopes)
Jello mold or Clear cups
Directions:
Mix the purple jello with an envelope of the knox gelatin.
Pour in two cups of boiling water. Dissolve the gelatin.
Add 1/2 cup of ice. Stir until thick.
Remove any remaining ice cubes and any bubbles that may have formed.
Pour a little into each clear cup and/or mold. Let set in the refrigerator.
Repeat with the blue jello and pour it over the set purple (and then the other colors).
Changing Daisies
Discuss: As the colored water is absorbed, the children will be able to see how the water is absorbed into the plant and will be amazed when the petals of the carnation change color.
Materials:
Food Coloring (each color of the rainbow)
Water
6 Clear Glasses
6 White Daisies
Directions:
Place 1 tablespoon food coloring and quarter cup of water in each glass.
Place 1 stem of daisies in each glass and wait for a couple of hours.
We spent the first day of our rainbow unit study learning the colors of the rainbow. We had fun with baking, crafts, reading, science experiments, similes, and math. The favorite activity for the kids today was definitely the rainbow flower cookies that we made. The three older kids can now recite all the colors of the rainbow.
Colors of the Rainbow
Discuss: What are the colors in the rainbow? (ROY G. BIV) Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Purple. Newton added indigo and orange to give a total of 7 colors similar to the number of notes in a musical scale and number of days in a week. Indigo is not really a color. It is a shade between blue and violet. Many people omit indigo from the rainbow spectrum because it is not a color and is hard for the human eye to distinguish between the blue and violet.
Read: Liz Makes a Rainbow by Tracey West
Comprehension Questions:
What are the colors of the rainbow? Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple
What is shade of color between blue and purple sometimes called? Indigo
Ordinal Numbers
Directions:
Give the child a blank rainbow and have him listen and follow the directions below as you read them.
Start at the top and color the first arc red. Color the fifth arc blue.
Color the fourth arc green. Color the third arc yellow.
Color the second arc orange. Color the sixth arc purple.
Rainbow Color Matching
Make a large rainbow out of poster board. Place the rainbow on the floor with small items of each color in a basket. The child places each item on the appropriate colored arc.
Rainbow Similes
Read:What Makes a Rainbow? by Betty Ann Schwartz
Discuss: A simile is a figure of speech consisting of a comparison of 2 objects using like or as. Similes tell you what something is LIKE. Similes are in What Makes a Rainbow? “Red LIKE a ladybugs wings.”
Materials:
Poster Board
Markers or Crayons
Printing Paper
Directions:
Pick a color. Describe the color by answering the following…
Tastes like Smells like Sounds like Looks like Hot like Cold like
Tell in a sentence or group of sentences what this color looks like, sounds like, etc…
Lightly sketch an outline of a large rainbow on the poster board.
Write our poems in the stripes exactly how the children dictate it to you.
Kids can make a smaller version of the Simile Rainbow on a piece of paper.
Kids write the word color over and over for each arc in the rainbow.
IMG_0363
Rainbow Pudding Cups
Ingredients:
6 packages of different colored Jello (purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red.)
6 Cups of Vanilla Ice Cream
6 Cups of Hot Water.
Clear glasses
IMG_0329
Directions:
Follow the instructions on the back of the jello box, but instead of adding a cup of cold water, you add a cup of ice cream.
Make sure you pour the pudding in a clear glass, and let each layer set up in the refrigerator before you add the next layer.
IMG_0330
Rainbow Puzzles
I print off page 8 of this Rainbow Download and let the children cut them out and place them together.
Cotton Ball Rainbow
Materials:
Cotton balls
White paper cut in a cloud “shape”
Construction paper in each color of the rainbow
Glue
Directions:
Give child the cloud shape.
Cover the bottom of the cloud with glue.
Child places color paper at the bottom of the cloud.
Add additional glue all over the paper cloud.
Place cotton balls to add “fluff.”
Planting A Rainbow
Read: Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Materials:
Sugar Cookie Dough
Food Coloring
Unsweetened cocoa powder
Sucker Sticks
Directions:
Divide the dough into 7 parts (one for each color and one for the flower centers)
Color the dough with the food coloring (red, orange, yellow, green blue, purple)
Add a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder to the dough, for the brown, flower centers.
Roll the dough into 1/2 inch balls.
Place colored balls around the centers, to form flowers, on a greased cookie sheet. Press them together a little, so they stick to each other. T thought he was playing with play dough!
Add a sucker, pushing it through the dough into the center of the flower.
Bake as normal for sugar cookies (350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10-12 minutes).
Baking Soda & Vinegar
Discuss: When the baking soda and the vinegar mix they create an acid-base reaction and the two chemicals work together to create a gas (the bubbles). Observe the 3 states of matter: the baking soda is the solid, the vinegar is the liquid, and the bubbles is the gas.
Materials:
baking soda
vinegar
spoons
clear cups or containers
food coloring
a tray to hold any spills
Directions:
Add a few drops of food color to each spoon.
Fill the rest of each spoon with baking soda.
Add ¼ to ½ cup of vinegar to each cup.
Choose a spoon and stir it into one cup of vinegar.
In this unit study we learned all about rainbows. This unit has 5 days worth of lessons. We did this unit study with cousins, from tots to 1st grade, but it would be great for Preschool age. This unit study was tons of fun for the cousins, but I guess cousins are always ton of fun whatever their doing! I made a lapbook for each child with their work from the unit so that they could go back and remember what they learned.
For this day we learned a few different types of ants. We also had fun with homophones and counting to 100. The boys love the books that you can sing with, so I found the big book of The Ants Go Marching at the library for them.
Types of Ants
Discuss:There are over 10,000 kinds of ants. We will learn about a few of them today.Leafcutter Ant -Leafcutter ants are also known as fungus gardening ants. The leafcutter workers snip off pieces of the plant and carry the leaf bits back to their underground nest. Then the ants chew the leaves, and use the chewed up leaf bits as a substrate on which to grow fungus. The ants eat that fungus. When a queen begins a new colony, she brings a starter culture of fungus with her to the new nest site.
Army Ant -Army ants are nomads. They don’t make permanent nests, but instead move into empty rodent nests or holes in the ground. Army ants are typically nocturnal, with nearly blind workers. These carnivores raid other ant nests at night, stinging their prey. When the queen begins laying new eggs and the larvae start pupating, the army ants have to stay in one place for a while. As soon as the eggs hatch and the new workers emerge, the colony moves on. When on the move, workers carry the colony’s young.
Carpenter Ant -Carpenter ants don’t actually eat the wood like termites do, but they do excavate nests and tunnels in people’s homes. Carpenter ants prefer moist wood, so if you’ve had a leak or flood in your home, be on the lookout for them to move in. Carpenter ants aren’t always pests, though. They actually provide an important service in the ecological cycle as decomposers of dead wood.
Slave Maker Ant -One method used by slavemaking ants is replacing the queen of the captive colony. The queen of an established slavemaking colony will lay eggs and produce new queens who then will leave the colony to develop their own colonies. The young slavemaking queen will wait outside of the colony she is leaving and follow a group of raiding slave makers into her new colony. As the worker slavemakers raid this new colony for eggs, the queen takes advantage of the battle by using it to sneak into the colony. Once she finds the other queen, she kills her and takes her place as the new queen. The new queen mimics the old queen by consuming pheromones from her body and releasing them to the attending ants. This new queen having mated with a slavemaking male ants earlier begins to lay new slavemakers eggs. Ant colonies invaded by slavemakers are quickly overcome and forced to support the slavemaking colony.
Fire Ant -Fire ants defend their nests aggressively, and will swarm anything that they think is a threat. The bites and stings of fire ants are said to feel like you’re being set on fire – thus the nickname. Fire ants build mounds, usually in open, sunny places, so parks, farms, and golf courses are particularly vulnerable to fire ant infestations.
Harvester Ant -Harvester ants inhabit deserts and prairies, where they harvest plant seeds for food. They store the seeds in underground nests. If the seeds get wet, the harvester ant workers will carry the food above ground to dry them and keep them from germinating. Like fire ants, harvester ants will defend their nest by inflicting painful bites and venomous stings.
Read: Ant by Rebecca Stefoff
Comprehension Questions:
Name a few different kinds of ants?
What kind of ant have fungus gardens? Leafcutter Ants
What kind of ant feels like your on fire when your bitten? Fire Ant
Homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings (ant the insect and Aunt your relative).
Read:Dear Deer by Gene Barretta
Comprehension Questions:
1. Aunt Ant meets a moose. Can you think of a homophone for moose?
2. Aunt Ant sees a ewe. Can you think of a homophone for ewe?
3. Aunt Ant sees a horse. Can you think of a homophone for horse?
4. The bat hangs from his feet. Can you think of a homophone for feet?
5. The monkey hangs from his tale. Can you think of a homophone for tail?
6. Aunt Ant sees a doe. Can you think of a homophone for doe?
7. Aunt Ant shares a seesaw with a toad. Can you think of a homophone for toad?
8. Aunt Ant is looking at a great big whale. Can you think of a homophone for whale?
9. Aunt Ant is looking at a huge bear. Can you think of a homophone for bear?
10. Aunt Ant sees a bee fly away. Can you think of a homophone for bee?
11. Aunt ant sees two gnus. Can you think of a homophone for gnus?
Activity:
We made homophone matches using clipart online. Split the matches between me and the J and have him pick up a card and tell me what it was… I respond by saying, “but I have_____”. He also liked playing memory with the homophone matches!
