Explaining how colours are made to a 5 year old

[Blatherskite]

DS is in Reception year at School. He'll be 5 in a couple of weeks.

This morning, he came to me and said "Mummy, do you know how colours are made?" in a tone of voice that showed he knew and wanted to tell me.

"No" I said, wondering how they'd explained light wavelengths to a 5 year old.

"God made them" was the reply.

Now DH and I are Atheists and DS attends a non denominational School so I wasn't exactly happy with this answer. I've told him that we don't believe that but the question has piqued his interest so now I need to find a way to explain to him how colours are really made.

It's been a long time since School - any help would be really appreciated!

How about this:

"The light from the sun has lots and lots of different colours hidden in it. (If he has the patience, you can demonstrate this with some sort of prism-shaped thing!)

"Different objects soak up some of the colours, but let some of them bounce back. Green plants let the green light bounce back, so they look green. Blue flowers let the blue light bounce back. Etc

"Black things soak up all the light - that's why they are so dark."

And I have to say that, even though I am a Christian, I'd be very disappointed in a teacher that resorted to "God made them" as an explanation. So I'm guessing this wasn't a science lesson!

I wonder whether it's something that he's picked up in assembly? There is a song called "Who put the colours in the rainbow?", which could have planted the idea in his head.

Thank you. We have some light refracting crystals that hang in the landing window that make rainbows on sunny days so maybe they might help explain the 'hidden' colours in light?

We've also go a periscope with coloured filters in that I got him for Christmas which might help with the reflection thing somehow. Maybe?

I'm totally happy for him to learn comparative religions - he's done Harvest festival and a Nativity at Christmas and was very proud of the Diva lamp he made for Divali but I'd prefer it if the stories came prefaced with the "some people believe..." This isn't the first time he's come out with something like this, a few weeks ago he announced that crosses "show we love Jesus" as we drove past a graveyard.

It's Parent's evening next week and I think I may have to say something.

This is too dry and factual for a five year old, so you'll have to paraphrase it for him. But it'll work as a colour spectrum refresher for you. He'll probably enjoy the bit about Isaac Newton and his hole in the window blind and prism.

www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Understand-Color-and-the-Light-Spectrum-78331971

Wouldn't worry too much about the "God made them" comment at nearly 5, both of mine at that age had a brief fling with Christianity and God.
We are definitely an agnostic family and their school is a very multi-cultural/multi-faith primary - both of DS's teachers so far have been Muslim and the RE co-ordinator is Hindu so I know religion at school isn't purely Christian-based. However DS recently declared he believed in God and Jesus. Our reaction was to assure him that it was fine if he wanted to believe that but that other people believed different things (or nothing) and that was fine too.
He now seems to have come round to DD's much more scientific view on creation and I think God has been dropped :)

Will be keeping the 'how colours are made' explanation in my 'Awkward Questions' folder on my Desktop - mainly filled with MN gems.

For future reference, my plan for explaining it this afternoon is this -

Light is all colours mixed together - I could do with a prism for this to show a beam of light splitting into a rainbow but I couldn't find one while shopping so have ordered one from ebay and will make do with the crystals we have hanging in the window for now. Will possibly find some bubble mix and pictures of rainbows too.

The colour we see is the light that bounces off objects. Some of the colours in light are absorbed and some are reflected. We see the reflected colours - demonstrated by showing that there are no colours in the dark. We also have a Science museum periscope with different colour filters in it which might help show how the colour we see depends on the colour of light we are seeing it in.

We have special areas at the back of ours eyes that absorb the reflected light and our brain tells us what colour it is - Need a picture of an eye cross section for this.

Different eyes see colour in different ways. Bees and dogs see colour differently to us and so does Daddy who is colour blind - going to see if I can find some pictures of what bees see etc and maybe a colour blindness spot test to show what we can see that Daddy sees differently.

Hopefully, that will be enough for now.