Students observe light and colour in their everyday life. Light as a form of energy sustains all life on earth. By exploring the relationship between light, colour and energy students are better able to understand their world. The wide range of colours that were produced suggests knowledge of the properties of light and colour. We take signals from colours in the form of signs and lights, they affect our mood and influence our temperature.
Cultures use colours symbolically in ceremonies to represent many things.
Aboriginal people attached significance to colours used in war, birth, death and marriage ceremonies. The colours represented the seasons, the direction, birth and death, night and day. The white, yellow, red and black colours of the medicine wheel provide many examples of the symbolic meanings of the colours. The meanings and the colours vary from region to region and tribe to tribe. For example, yellow could be obtained from sunflowers and the roots of dandelions, red from certain berries, red soils, or a mixture of gray and yellow clays baked over ashes, and black from berries, charcoal and some black earth.