At Home Lesson Ideas 1: Rainbow -

You are on a trip with your children on rainy days. The sun comes out, and suddenly you see a rainbow! Your children must be excited. Why not use this moment as a starter for an exciting lesson?

Covid has definitely change the way we think about education. People come to see that education is no longer limited to the walls of the classroom. More and more people have implemented online learning and more parents have gained their courage to fully take responsibility for their children's education.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I would like to share lesson ideas that you can do at home. At the moment of writing that post, I was only thinking about how parents and teachers can manage at home lessons. However, I soon realized that the need for at home lesson is growing fast, Even after school are opened, many parents still seek for online alternative for their children, especially when the kid or family member are sick, or they should go to a trip, or when the kid is in special talents program like sports or entertainment. So, I see the future of at home education is promising.

In this post, I would like to develop the lesson idea, around the most beautiful natural arch that appears as a gift after a rain: The rainbow.

Starter: Rainbow Hunt

Rainbow hunt is always a fascinating experience, especially to young children. After the rain stops, offer your kids to go out to look for a rainbow. Sometimes you can find it, sometimes you cannot. You may limit the time or distance from your home to do the hunt. It must not take forever right. Yet, you must encourage your children to be patient and wait for another rainy time. This builds their perseverance to get something that they want.

If you kid is of a middle school or high school age, rainbow hunt might not interest them. You can ask your teenage kid to go for a hike together. Target for a waterfall. Rainbows usually appear in the waterfall. Not only hiking can build their strength, but also it will be an amazing experience doing outdoor activity together with the family.

It is a good practice if the kids also always take notes while they are on a trip. About using field notes I will explain it in a separate post.

Topics You Can Incorporate with Rainbow

There are many lesson topics you can develop from the rainbow. What I listed here are only a few of them. You can develop more based on your experience of your research. The list below will be updated in the future.

1. Colors

You can explain the difference about monochromatic light (colored light) and polychromatic light (white light). This topic is suitable for elementary school age kids.

2. Dispersion

Following the observation of rainbow, you can make a simple experiment using prism to generate a rainbow. Project the image on a piece of paper, so that you can show how the polychromatic light disperse into monochromatic light due to different wavelength. This topic is suitable to middle to high school age kids.

3. Diffraction Grating

in high school age, you can link what they already know with the application in real life. Dispersion are used in common projectors. Using diffraction grating, you can replace prism to make the same dispersion effect.

Closing: Reflection

The end of a lesson is the time for you kid to reflect. This is actually the most important part of a lesson. Ask your kid what they have experienced, do they like it or not. Remind them how lucky we are to have God created us the rainbow to see. How we need to be so grateful for the beautiful world God created.

Those are several lesson ideas about the rainbow. If you have other ideas, or you have an experience related to this article, feel free to leave a comment below.

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