Rainbow coloring pages and the rule you get to break

If your child wants the true version, the order is easy to hold onto once you meet Roy G. Biv. Each letter starts the name of a color, outer band to inner: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Red rides the outside of the arc, violet curves along the inside, and the rest line up between them.

And if your child wants a turquoise rainbow over a pink hill, that is the right answer too. The pages here work both ways.

A few facts are worth slipping in while the crayons are out. They turn a quiet coloring session into a small science lesson, and they give older kids something to draw on purpose.

The second arc runs backwards. When a fainter rainbow appears above the main one, its colors flip: red on the inside, violet on the outside. The light bounces twice inside each droplet to make that second bow, which is why it looks dimmer and reversed.

A rainbow is sunlight pulled apart. Hold a glass of water in a sunbeam, or watch a soap bubble drift past, and the same colors show up. White light is every color traveling together until something bends it into a fan.

Rainbows hide in small places. A garden sprinkler, a puddle touched with oil, the mist at the foot of a waterfall. Once a child knows what makes a rainbow, they start finding them everywhere.

Rainbows and rain clouds travel together, so a bright arc pairs nicely with a sheet of cloud coloring pages for the sky behind it.

Pick a page, then pick your rules. Color it like the sky for the lesson, color it like you for the fun, or print two and do both. Crayons ready, here is the full set.