If we were in the classroom, we would be learning about rain
and the change in the weather that happens along with Spring!
When we talk about weather we talk about the water cycle, how clouds form and of course, rain! We love making rain cloud jars at school to help your child understand this and thought you could make one at home too!
What you need:
-Shaving Cream
-Clear Jar
-Water
-Some water died blue
-Dropper (you can also use a spoon)
Start by filling your jar almost to the top with the non died water leaving about 2 inches of space from the top. Use the shaving cream to form a puffy cloud at the top of the jar. Then use your dropper to drop the colored water on top of the shaving cream.
At first, nothing much will happen. You can compare this to a cloud being filled with water droplets, which are not yet heavy enough to fall to the ground as rain. However, the more blue water you add the more saturated the "cloud" becomes and your child will begin to see streaks of "rain," fall into the clear water in the jar.
Explaining the way the Water Cycle works to your child can be made simple!
- The water in oceans, lakes, and rivers turn into gaseous water vapor when heated by the sun in a process called evaporation. The evaporated water then rises into the air. As it goes higher, it encounters cooler and cooler temperatures that cause the water vapor to condense back into liquid water droplets. When enough of these water droplets come together, they form a cloud! These water droplets inside of the cloud are always moving and bumping into each other. Sometimes the water droplets collide and join together forming bigger water droplets. These are the ones that are heavy enough to fall as raindrops just as they did in your jar experiment!