Rain Cloud in a Jar

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Making a rain cloud in a jar is a fun and easy way to teach children how it rains.  Kids will love the magical wow factor and YOU’LL love the easy prep!

Check out the simple step-by-step below and then take our 5 Day Challenge to set up STEM centers your students will love and to build a system for teaching STEM in your classroom!

Rain Cloud in a Jar

Getting Ready

To make our rain cloud in a jar, we gathered a few simple items:

  • Food coloring
  • Water
  • A clear jar
  • Shaving cream
  • Plastic pipettes

First, we mixed a few drops of food coloring into some water and set it aside. This served as our “rain.”

My preschooler loved making rain so much that we ended up repeating this activity several times with blue, yellow, purple, red and green food coloring.

I filled our glass jar about 3/4 of the way full with cool water.

Once we made a fluffy “cloud” on top of the water using shaving cream, we were ready to get to the fun part: making it rain!

Rain Cloud in a Jar

Rain Cloud in a Jar

I instructed my preschooler to suck up some of the colored water into her pipette and then gently squirt it on top of our shaving cream cloud. She quickly became a pro.

Rain Cloud in a Jar

As she squirted more and more water onto the shaving cream, our cloud became heavier and heavier.

Within a few minutes, the first drops of colored rain made their way through the cloud and dropped into the water underneath.

There were cheers of excitement and lots of jumping up and down as we watched the colored water drop down through the clouds!

Rain Cloud in a Jar

We continued to saturate the shaving cream clouds with water until they started to deflate and melt down the side of the jar.

My daughter had so much fun, we rinsed out the jar and started all over again with a new rain color!  We had a blast making differently colored rain clouds in a jar.

The Science Behind It

Clouds are formed when water vapor rises into the air and condenses onto tiny particles of dust. When billions of these droplets come together, a visible cloud forms.

Over time, the droplets and crystals that make up a cloud can attract more water to themselves.

When water droplets grow heavy enough, gravity pulls them down as raindrops.

Making a rain cloud in a jar is obviously a simplistic model of how it actually rains, but it gives young children a hands-on visual that is extremely valuable to their learning. Plus, it’s fun!

More Fun for Little Learners

Want more STEM?  Take our 5 Day Challenge to set up STEM centers your students will love and to build a system for teaching STEM in your classroom!

 

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