Over the rainbow for outdoors

My family celebrates rainbows in June.

We fly rainbow flags.

We wear rainbow-themed T-shirts.

And we go looking for rainbows.

We’re just over the moon for rainbows in June.

So I found myself wishing for rain the day after Memorial Day and every day since.

Rainbows inspire pride, dreams, imagination, curiosity and artistry. To quote a singing frog named Kermit: “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection/The lovers, the dreamers and me.”

One of my most thoughtful conversations with a young niece was about a rainbow.

“Have you ever touched a rainbow? I have,” she confided.

Now that she’s on summer break, I hope she gets the opportunity to search for many rainbows, chase her shadow, scour the shore for shells and tell a ghostly tale at a campfire.

June is Great Outdoors Month in the United States, an opportunity for exploration, recreation and rejuvenation and, for children, a time to learn outside the classroom or Zoom space.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children offers guidance on getting outdoors with kids:

• Join children in the fun if they want you to but always keep an eye on them. Simplicity is the key to establishing safety rules and there is usually no need to restrict children.
• Let children choose what to explore and see what they do on their own, without offering suggestions. Do they dig? Build? Climb?
• Ask open-ended questions. Ask kids about their discoveries and don’t pretend to know all the answers. You might even learn something.
• Any walk can become a nature walk.
• And shadow play can entertain for hours, provided there’s light to create shadows.

I’ve walked along Gulf Drive with a crowd of nieces and nephews and our shadows and traced their shadow outlines on sidewalks.

Next time we’re together, I might ask my youngest niece if she can feel her shadow.

And, apart more than a year because of the pandemic, I certainly hope I don’t find that she’s grown too old to touch a rainbow.

 

About rainbows

A traditional rainbow is sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors and diverted to the eye of the observer by water droplets.

To see a rainbow:

• You need to be standing with the sun to your back and the rain in front of you;
• The sun needs to be less than 42 degrees above the horizon;
• The sun’s rays must be hitting the raindrops to create the rainbow.

The colors of the rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

When the sun is lower, the rainbow will be higher in the sky.

Earth is the only planet in the solar system where rainbows occur.