Over the rainbow with Early Years activities

Half terms at Eureka! are fantastically themed filled events and this latest one was no exception. Our theme for this particular February half term was the classic film ‘The Wizard of Oz’; the influence of which resonated throughout the full museum. As the Early Years enabler it was my job to make sure that this was also key feature of the under-fives’ area, the Creativity Space. So when it came to deciding on what aspect of the Wizard of Oz to concentrate on I began by breaking the story down to its basic components and found the amazing array of colour featured within. I found that I was also fascinated by the colour used in the film and how they highlighted this burst of colour by beginning with black and white film and then over the rainbow to the wonderfully highlighted, technicolour Land of Oz.

Ready for rainbows in the classroom, as one of our Enablers plays with the light box.

As an Early Year professional I know that colour is greatly important early on in the Early Years Foundation Stage and that, by the age of 3, some children will be able to identify and match up colours. Researchers have found that toddlers are able to learn the names of colours but not an understanding of the relationship between the colours. By the time children are three years old they have mastered the basic colours and correlations between them. However, at this age colourations, shades and neighbouring colours are often still confusing and mistakes are easily made. As learning about colours can be lots of fun I took this as a fantastic opportunity to enhance the opportunities for learning about colours at Eureka! and to express the importance of colour with our ‘over the rainbow’ focus.

Whether we realise it or not colour plays such an integral part of our lives. As babies we begin to associate colours to moods and feelings and throughout our childhood we build upon this. Pink is often associated with a comforting feeling as this is the colour we might have experienced whilst in the womb. Even when we grow older we can attribute other emotional connotations to colours.

Colour is everywhere; all around us this magnificent planet contains all the colours of the rainbow. When we break colour down into it’s simplest form colour is simply light interacting with receptors in our eyes to ‘show’ us the primary colour spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet; the true rainbow. For The Wizard of Oz our little ‘munchkins’ experienced a different colour each day of the week in accordance to this true rainbow. Within the classroom there was colour everywhere! The light box had coloured sand. The . water tray held coloured gooey ‘Gelli baff’, which is a product that turns children’s bath water into jelly like goo and then back again. The children could paper mache a section of the rainbow, and were also able to choose from an array of materials to create their own masterpieces; all of these were changed daily in accordance with the colour of the day. Along with each colour of the day I also featured their shades of colours, such as light and dark and pastel and vivid colours in order to highlight that each colour is not singular but has an array of variations across the colour wheel.  

It was fantastic to see the children respond in such a positive way to this theme and to the colours within the Creativity Space. I even noticed the impact of some colour days over others; ;on the red and yellow days where people seemed more vivacious than on the more subdued green and blue days. Whatever the reasons for this we all had a wonderful time; this was a well received event and I loved every minute of the week.

During the week, I particularly enjoyed the day where I worked with my favourite colour, blue. What’s your favourite colour? What do you like about it?

Penny Dargan-Makin is the Early Years Specialist Enabler at Eureka! The National Children’s Museum.