Introduction: Summer is right around the corner so kids will spend a lot of time outside so lets introduce them to some weather activities! There are many different weather activities to try but I wanted to show a really hands on craft, so let’s get started!
Overview: Clouds are formed when water vapor evaporates and rises into the air from the ocean, lakes, and rivers below. The higher the water vapor goes the colder it becomes and condenses into water droplets. When all the water vapor condenses and comes together they form a cloud! The water droplets inside a cloud are always moving and bumping into each other. Sometimes, water droplets collide and join together then they form bigger water droplets. If these droplets reach at least 1/10 mm in size, they are big enough to fall to the ground as rain.
- A glass jar
- Water (tap or filtered is fine)
- Shaving cream
- Blue food coloring (kids are literal learners so it will be easier for them to understand using the color blue to represent rain.)
- A pipette (if the food coloring doesn’t come with one)
- First fill the jar about three-quarters full with water.
- Fill the rest of the jar with shaving cream to create a cloud on top of the water, then let it settle in place for a little while.
- Then drop some food coloring on top of the “cloud” until you see it on the bottom.
- As the “cloud’ fills up the food coloring will begin to fall out of the bottom creating a rain like effect!
- You can also use different colors for your rain cloud to create a rainbow!
- Now you have officially made it rain! thankfully this rainstorm didn’t require an umbrella though! (:
Questions to ask:
- What do you know about the water cycle?
- Can you name the different types of clouds?
- How does rain happen?
- Where does rain come from?
Here are some other cool experiments to check out!