make a colour collecting box for nature play

 All you need is a box, egg carton or chocolate box (be sure to eat every chocolate first..) - anything really that already has compartments or you can make easily with some cut up cardboard. Take out your paint set and paint each compartment with a different colour - like a rainbow, let it dry and then you are set for nature find adventures.

 Step out to your local park, garden and have a good search with the kids on what colours they can find to match the box compartments.

All about rainbows

In our city urban jungles, colour is a delight from the sometimes grey, brown building blocks. Our eyes go looking for bright and lively colour from window box blooms, trees in spring, the odd bright coloured curtains the neighbours have and the much loved sight of a rainbow!

In times long ago, people believed that the rainbow was a direct line to the gods. The goddess Iris, in greek mythology embodied the rainbow. She would leave the colourful arc of colour across the sky as the messages she has delivered from earth to the heavens. For Noah and his ark, it was the sign that the floods were passing and god had spared him, his family and animals.

Nowadays, the rainbow is a symbol of hope, peace and happiness. Rainbows in the window to thank key workers during the coronavirus, the colourful stripes across the LGBTQI pride flag designed by Gilbert Baker since 1978. The rainbow is a promise of good things to come - like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

You can't help but look up to a rainbow and feel happy, just like the feeling, you can't catch it in a jar as it is actually an optical illusion - a beautiful one. Made from sunlight passing through drops of water, the light scatters, separating the colours and in turn we get the seven colours, which gives us the seven colours of the rainbow. 

The scientific discovery of the rainbow was made by Sir Isaac Newton, in the 1660s he started making experiments with sunlight and prisms. He discovered that clear white light was made up of seven colours - just like our rainbow we see in the sky. 

Signs of hope, messages to gods, a symbol of freedom the rainbow means lots of things to different people but one thing never changes - that same feeling looking up and feeling excited when we see one stretched across the sky.