This science and math lesson uses coated candy and water to create a rainbow on a plate. It takes a popular internet activity and modifies it for the classroom. It's extended by having students hypothesize if other temperatures of water will work and if different colors of the candies run faster than others. It also meets the math SOLs because students can calculate the cost of the experiment and/or create graphs of the results of the experiments.  You could extend this activity into art or English writing by having students draw their rainbows or write about what they saw happening on the plate as a report writing. You could have them take it a step further and do a creative writing about what they think is at the other end of the rainbow. 

Lesson Delivery: Students will collect weather data for a given city/town from a weather website to analyze and create a graph that displays the change in temperature over a time period (one or twq weeks). Useful Sites: Create a Graph: https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/Default.aspx Weather Data: https://www.weather.gov/wrh/climate

Exploring data collection and graphing -- Mathematics Instructional Plans (MIPs) help teachers align instruction with the 2016 Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL) by providing examples of how the knowledge, skills and processes found in the SOL and curriculum framework can be presented to students in the classroom. 

Standard of Learning (SOL) 3.15a
The student will collect, organize, and represent data in pictographs or bar graphs.

Standard of Learning (SOL) 3.15b
The student will read and interpret data represented in pictographs and bar graphs.

Exploring data collection and graphing -- Mathematics Instructional Plans (MIPs) help teachers align instruction with the  Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL) by providing examples of how the knowledge, skills and processes found in the SOL and curriculum framework can be presented to students in the classroom.