1. First, ask your child to draw two rainbows. One on white paper with any kind of Crayola Crayons and one on dark construction paper with Crayola Construction Paper™ Crayons. How are those drawings similar or different? Next, create two real rainbows.
2. To make a “Dark-Room Rainbow” take a clear bottle of water, a flashlight, white and dark paper, and Crayola Construction Paper Crayons into a dark room. Set the water bottle on a counter and shine the flashlight at a sharp angle down through the bottle, which will act like a prism, splitting the light into colors. Hold the sheet of white paper wherever the rainbow touches the counter or a wall. Ask your child to draw this dark-room rainbow on the dark construction paper using Crayola Construction Paper Crayons.
3. Now create a “Garden Hose Rainbow.” On a sunny day (preferably early in the morning when the sun is low), spray a garden hose nozzle until it makes a fine mist, while your child stands facing away from the sun. The rainbow is formed as the sun hits the arc of falling water droplets which act as prisms, bending the light into colors. Have your child draw this rainbow using white paper and crayons. Compare the rainbows drawn before the experiments and after. Notice how all rainbows have the same colors and those colors are arranged in the same order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Ask your child to talk about similar experiments with color that he or she has done in school.
Colorful Bottle Band
The amount of water held in a glass bottle affects the sound that bottle makes when tapped. Make a glass-bottle band and colorful song sheet, using Crayola Markers. First, take six to eight glass bottles that are about the same size. (Glasses would work, too.) Fill each bottle with a different amount of water. Place one marker into each bottle for a few minutes, creating colored water. Arrange the bottles by water level, from lowest to highest. Tap the rim of each bottle lightly with a metal spoon. Listen to the different sounds. Now hum or sing a familiar tune. Use Crayola Markers to write and color-code a song sheet, showing others which bottles to tap, in which order, to create those tunes.
Roller Ball and Airplane Races
Have fun with friction and flight, using Crayola Model Magic® modeling material. First, create Model Magic balls of different sizes and textures. Lean a piece of wood or cardboard on a small, sturdy object to create a ramp and have a roller-ball race. Notice how friction (the force that acts to slow moving objects) affects the balls with their different textures and sizes/surface areas. Insert pennies and paper clips in some balls to see how weight affects the race. Then use the Model Magic to create various styles of miniature airplanes. Try wings that are short or long, narrow or wide, and try differently shaped plane bodies, too. Let the planes dry overnight. Conduct a race and observe how the various airplane styles move through air and how speed is affected by different shapes, different weights, and the force used to send them off.