Use this hands-on activity to teach children how a cloud fills up with water droplets until rain falls! You and your students will love making a rain cloud in a jar with a few simple supplies. Read on to find out how!
This science experiment is an awesome activity for wrapping up a weather unit or reinforcing a lesson on the water cycle. The idea behind this activity is to demonstrate how a cloud becomes saturated with water droplets until it cannot hold any more moisture, resulting in rain.
It's super easy to do this activity with your students! You only need a few supplies: a glass jar, a medicine dropper, food coloring, and shaving cream.
Once you have your supplies, fill the glass jar three-quarters of the way full with water. Then add a "cloud" of shaving cream to the top. The fluffier and puffier the cloud, the better! It looks really good if the shaving cream puffs over the top of the jar, like this:
Now fill a medicine dropper with blue food coloring. (It's easiest to squirt some food coloring into a paper cup or bowl and fill the dropper from there.) Carefully drop food coloring into the cloud of shaving cream. It may take one or two full droppers of food coloring before the cloud becomes "saturated" enough, but when it does, the food coloring will start to rain down from the cloud!
How cool is that?! We bet your students will love watching the drops of food coloring streak through the water in the jar!
It's a really quick and simple activity, but the textures and colors in this experiment will grab kids' attention and help reinforce basic rain cloud concepts.
If you try this activity with your students, we want to know how it goes! Will you leave your feedback for us in the comment section below? We want to hear from you!
Also, you may want to pair this activity with other awesome cloud and weather worksheets from the Super Teacher Worksheets Weather Page. Our collection is brimming with charts, posters, articles, scavenger hunts, and more!
Now it's your turn. Bring on the rain!
