Literature Based Unit Study

Book by Don Freeman
Summary: A young boy runs outside to catch a rainbow. When he comes to where the rainbow should be it is gone. The boy imagines another rainy day where a rainbow follows him and they play together.

Literature Based Unit Study by Susan Mallette

Language Arts: Drama
Children will enjoy acting out the scenes from the book using the descriptive words and phrases Freeman wrote to make the story come alive. Talk with children about how writers use words to paint hearing pictures then ask your child to act out the following descriptive phrases:

Walk slowly

Hear a soft whirring sound

Hop

Leap

Climb

Slide

Swing

Math: Counting
The boy plays hide and seek with his rainbow. He shuts his eyes, counts to twenty and then looks all around for his friend the rainbow. Practice counting to twenty with your child, you say one number, he says another or try saying all the numbers together as you point to them written on a sheet of paper. When he’s ready let him count to twenty while you hide and then you count to twenty while he hides.

If you have already made your rainbow (directions below), you could take turns hiding the rainbow from each other while one of you counts to twenty.

Science: Rainbows
The boy returns home and finds a real rainbow in his room. The sun is shinning through the water in his goldfish bowl and a real rainbow is dancing on his wall.

Try making a rainbow of your own:

Materials needed:

A clear glass filled with water

A window

A sunny day

A piece of white paper

What to do:

Put the glass filled with water on a sheet of white paper in front of a sunny window. Look at the paper you will see a rainbow.

Explain to your child that to see a rainbow it has to rain and the sun has to be out. The raindrops reflect the sunlight, the white light from the sun has many colors in it but we can’t see those colors all the time only when we see them through the water of the rain or in your experiment above, through the water in the glass.

Art/Craft: Making a Rainbow
Make a rainbow for your child to play with just like the boy in A Rainbow of My Own.

Materials needed:

Construction or crepe paper in the following colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, dark purple or indigo and violet.

A toilet paper or paper towel tube. Scissors, tape and markers or paint.

Cut long strips of construction or crepe paper in the colors of a rainbow and tape them into the inside of the toilet paper or paper towel tube. Use markers or paint to color the tube in the colors of the rainbow too.Now you can swing your rainbow around, let it chase you by holding it behind you as you run, try to hop over it or dance with it.

Explain to your child that the colors of the rainbow are always seen in the same order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

Just for Fun

Snack Idea: Rainbow Toast

Ingredients:

12 tablespoons of milk

4 unused paint brushes

white bread

4 different colors of food coloring: Red, blue, yellow, green.

What to do: put three tablespoons of milk into four different cups. Add a few drops of different food coloring to each cup.

You will have red, blue, yellow and green milk.

Tip: You can make orange milk by adding red and yellow together or purple milk with red and blue.

Paint the white bread with different colors to make a rainbow. Toast it. Add butter and eat. Rainbow toast !

Links
Play the Rainbow Game!
Rainbow Jello
Letter R Worksheet
Rainbow of My Own Activity Guide

Library List
Duckie's Rainbow by Frances Barry

Materials and information on this website belong to the original composers. It may be used for your own personal and school use.