We were so excited to receive our new STEAM KIDS book the other day. My Wee Warhols student “M” and I wanted to try out Buggy And Buddy’s Prism Play project right away. I got out my three different size triangular prisms for us to explore.
M’s first question was, “What is that?” Good question. We talked about a prism as a shape. In geometry, a triangular prism is a three-sided prism; it is a polyhedron made of a triangular base, a translated copy, and 3 faces joining corresponding sides. A right triangular prism has rectangular sides, otherwise it is oblique. -Wikipedia All of those words seem to complicate things for a 3.5 year old, so we felt the prisms, exploring all the sides that create the form, getting to know the shape.
Reading the book, I explained to M that “Prisms cause light to refract and each wavelength of light bends at a different angle, separating the light into a spectrum of color.” – Chelsey Marashian
We placed the prisms on lined paper and observed how the lines appeared differently when viewing them under the prisms.
This was cool, but when I explained to M that we could make a rainbow, none of this other stuff seemed to matter any longer. We NEEDED TO MAKE A RAINBOW!!!
We placed the prism on white paper and played around with it until we saw a rainbow. I asked M if she wanted to trace the rainbow.
I decided we should get out some Geometric Solids and explore what happened when the light passed through them. We placed them out on the paper. M traced the colored light that was created.
We noticed that as time passed and the sun shifted the shapes and the intensity changed as well. M went home, but I continued to record the changes (whenever I remembered to).
M and I also read Light , My First Discoveries book. This is a good resource when talking about many aspects of light.
If you haven’t gotten your copy of STEAM KIDS , you should. It is filled with fun STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) projects that will make your child question, explore, and create.
If you are interested in downloading the STEAM KIDS ebook Click HERE.
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