What Is Scaffolding in Children’s Reading? Meet the Mythical Rainbow Path 🌈
- Dizzy Carr
- Aug 23
- 4 min read
Helping children understand stories, explore emotions and discover meaning through reading scaffolding
Sometimes a child can read every word on a page perfectly — but understanding a story can involve much more than simply knowing what the words say.
Why did a character behave that way?
How were they feeling?
What changed?
What could they have done differently?
And what can we learn from what happened?
These are the questions that can turn reading a story into exploring a story.
And that’s where something called scaffolding can help.
Funny enough, the whole idea for the Mythical Rainbow Path began with one very short question from a visitor to the Dizzy Carr website:
“Scaffolding?”
My website AI wasn’t entirely sure what they meant.
Neither was I. 😂
So I started looking into it.
And one innocent question eventually became a rather bigger project than expected...
What is scaffolding in children’s reading?
Despite the name, there are no ladders, hard hats or actual scaffolding involved!
In education, scaffolding in childrens reading means giving a child temporary support that helps them understand or complete something they might find difficult to do entirely on their own.
With reading, that support can be surprisingly simple.
A carefully chosen question might encourage a child to remember something important from the story.
Another might help them think about how a character was feeling.
A further question might encourage them to connect what happened in the book with something they understand from their own life.
The important part is that we're not simply giving children the answers.
We're giving them a little support to help them find those answers themselves.
And as their confidence and understanding grow, they may need less support along the way.
From scaffolding to the Mythical Rainbow Path 🌈
Once I understood the idea, something immediately clicked.
The Griffin & Mythical Friends books already explore
subjects including friendship, trust,
hope, perseverance, accepting differences,
asking for help and working together.
So what if children could
follow Griffin through those stories again
but this time stop and explore what happened along the way?
That idea became:
🌈 THE MYTHICAL RAINBOW PATH 🌈
The Mythical Rainbow Path is a collection of activities created around the 12 Griffin & Mythical Friends adventures.
Each path takes children back through one of Griffin’s stories using simple, child-friendly questions and prompts designed to support story comprehension, reflection and discussion.
Children aren't being tested.
There isn't a score to beat.
Instead, they're being encouraged to think, talk, remember and discover.
How does the Mythical Rainbow Path work?
Every Rainbow Path follows the events and emotional journey of its book.
Children might begin with something straightforward:
Who does Griffin meet?
Then the questions gradually encourage them to look a little deeper:
What went wrong?
How did the character feel?
Why didn't something work?
What changed?
And eventually:
What did we discover?
The paths visually travel through the worlds of the stories too — from snowy villages and mysterious caves to candy worlds, cloudy kingdoms and even a rather enormous maze.
Most of the illustrations are deliberately kept black and white so children can colour the worlds themselves, while the Rainbow Path winds through each adventure.
12 books. 12 paths. 12 different discoveries.
Every Griffin & Mythical Friends story explores something different.
Across the complete Mythical Rainbow Path, children can explore ideas including:
🌈 Working together
🌈 Loyalty
🌈 Finding your voice
🌈 Being yourself
🌈 Keep trying
🌈 Trust
🌈 Hope
🌈 Leadership
🌈 Accepting help
🌈 Celebrating differences
🌈 Perseverance
🌈 Making a difference
And because each activity follows the events of its particular story, those ideas aren't presented as abstract lessons.
Children discover them through characters, choices, problems and adventures they've already experienced in the books.
And there’s something waiting at the end... 🏅
Completing a Rainbow Path deserves celebrating.
So each adventure also has its own Certificate of Achievement, recognizing the particular discovery made through that story.
Complete The Griffin's Gift, for example, and children celebrate discovering the power of Working Together. The certificate reinforces the idea that our different strengths can make us stronger together.
Complete all 12 adventures and there may just be something rather special waiting at the end of the Rainbow Path too...
And anyone familiar with Griffin's adventures might want to keep an eye open for a certain little ladybird along the way. 🐞
Download the FREE Mythical Rainbow Path
The complete Mythical Rainbow Path activity collection is FREE to download.
It includes activities covering all 12 Griffin & Mythical Friends stories, together with achievement certificates to celebrate the journey.
Please note: the storybooks themselves are not included in the activity collection and are available separately.
Welcome to Rainbow Path Sunday 🌈
And we're not stopping here.
This is the beginning of Rainbow Path Sunday.
Each Sunday we'll take one of Griffin's adventures and explore the ideas behind its Rainbow Path — what happens, what Griffin and the Mythical Friends discover, and how parents, carers and educators can use the story to start conversations with children.
And naturally, there's only one place we can begin.
Next Rainbow Path Sunday:
🌈 The Griffin's Gift — Working Together
Griffin's journey is waiting.
Let's follow the Rainbow Path. 🌈
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