Skittle rainbows

Now that work has slowed down some and we're finally getting a rhythm every Tuesday I get to teach the boys. While Strong man puts all the hard work in giving spelling tests, teaching history, and the other day to day kind of school things, I've been able to do some art and science with the boys.  Actually, I'm teaching them science through art.  I love hands on learning.  Its how I learn and how I have always taught others, and now that includes my children.  I have always felt if one knows the "hows" and "whys" of a concept then it will be there's forever.

We started with the color wheel, about primary and secondary colors.

Piece done by Man of the Woods.

Which of course led to rainbows and light waves.

Laughter's master piece.

Rainbows and light waves have lead us to density and the water cycle.

Today we made rainbows out of dissolved skittles.

In each cup we had 2 TBS of water and then added the skittles in this way:
Cup 1 - 10 purple skittles.
Cup 2 - 8 green skittles.
Cup 3 - 6 yellow skittles.
Cup 4 - 4 orange skittles.
Cup 5 - 2 red skittles.

This is not an instant gratification project as it takes about 3 hours for the skittles to dissolve, but the anticipation was half the fun.

Once they dissolved we put the purple in an empty glass first then with a medicine dropper add each color after that, putting the denser colors in first so each color would sit on the other.

And so we got to learn about density through rainbows and skittles.