Rainbow Crafts – colour wheel free printable

How do we explain to our children what’s going on in the world?
At times like this we can turn to music and art to inspire and uplift. Take a song such as ‘It’s a wonderful world’ which was released in 1968, a year when there were fears of a second civil war, in which America saw curfews as race riots spread from Newark and Detroit to over 100 cities.

Louis Armstrong said of this song: “Some of you young folks been saying to me: ‘Hey, Pops – what do you mean, what a wonderful world? How about all them wars all over the place, you call them wonderful?'” Armstrong said as he introduced a live performance of the song….
“But how about listening to old Pops for a minute? Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s so bad but what we’re doing to it, and all I’m saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we’d give it a chance. Love, baby – love. That’s the secret.”

The rainbow has long been seen as an important element of art and religion, and indeed politics, throughout history.

A black president lives in the White House that’s lit up by a rainbow. America. pic.twitter.com/vouFAeV3iX

— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) 27 June 2015

So as Louis Armstrong sings “The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of the people passing by” We decided to create our own rainbow pretty in the sky –  you can print this off as a poster, or you can make it into a spinning Newton’s Disk – For your free printable, click here – if you use this, and it works well for you, do tag us on Social Media ( @incredibusy ) so that we can see it!

Instructions for how to make a Newton’s Disk:

1. Print off the poster here – free printable, click here 
2. Glue the print out onto a piece of cardboard, we used a cereal box
3. Trim around the circle with a pair of scissors
4. Use a sharp object, a pencil for example, to push through two holes in the centre of the disk
5. Feed your length of string through the two holes, tie the ends together
6. Begin spinning the disk, by pulling on both ends, and then releasing the pressure
7. Watch the rainbow appear!

I have also created a plain mono version of this printable CLICK HERE – so that you can print a few out, and experiment with your own paints and colouring pencils, with the positions of the coloured rainbow sections…

For a rainbow you will need the following seven colours of the spectrum:
red
orange
yellow
green
blue
indigo
violet
This mnemonic is a great way to remember the order of the colours: ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’.

More about coloured light and primary colours

There are three primary colours in light: red, green and blue. Light in these colours can be added together to make the secondary colours magenta, cyan and yellow. All three primary colours add together make white light.

Rainbows appear in seven colors because water droplets break white sunlight into the seven colours of the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Did you know, you can only see a rainbow if the Sun is behind you and the rain in front?

MORE COOL INCREDIBUSY Crafts here…

Oh, by the way, I’m also on twitter/incredibusy too… Erm, funnily enough on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest!