Down Comes the Rain: A Rain Experiment for Kids

Hi, friends!  It’s almost April, and you know what they say… April showers bring May flowers!  With that being said, this post comes just in time to explain how to complete a fun, little rain experiment with your little learners!

If you read my Books Teachers Love post for February and March, you would have seen that I try my best to integrate my lessons across the content areas.  I truly believe that this continuous repetition throughout the day is the best way to make new information stick with our little learners.  It also is a great way to introduce important vocabulary words in context.  Down Comes the Rain by Franklyn Branley does exactly that.

It introduces a number of important vocabulary words related to rain and the water cycle.  This adorable nonfiction text explains the water cycle in simple enough terms that are perfect for our little learners.

Down Comes the Rain also describes how the clouds fill up with tiny droplets.  The droplets join together to form drops.  When the drops become too heavy, they fall to the ground as rain.

I always read this part of the story in conjunction with our rain jar experiment to help solidify the idea of the drops becoming too heavy for the cloud.  First, I gathered all of my supplies.

• Foaming Shaving Cream
• Glass Jar
• Blue Food Coloring
• Pipette or Dropper

This part was easy since I had all of these items around my home.

I filled the jar with water, leaving enough space at the top for the shaving cream.  Then, I filled the jar the rest of the way by squirting the shaving cream on top of the water.  At this point, I reminded the students that the shaving cream is like a cloud in the sky and the water is like the air filling the sky.  Of course, no science experiment would be complete without a little hypothesis, so don’t forget to have your kiddos predict what they think will happen when you begin dropping the blue food coloring onto the cloud.

Then, we got to work testing our hypothesis.  I began dropping blue food coloring onto the clouds.  Because my clouds were so thick, the food coloring wasn’t heavy enough to fall through.  {Side tip… remember to place a tray under your jar to catch any food coloring that spills down the sides!}

I decided to add some food coloring to a separate glass of water and use a pipette to add droplets to the cloud.  This method worked much faster because the food coloring and water combined were much heavier than the food coloring alone.

If you take a closer look, you can see how the water drops saturate the cloud.  They are just too heavy and… DOWN comes the rain!

You can grab Down Comes the Rain from Amazon using this affiliate link.

If you’d like to give the Rain Jar Experiment a try in your classroom, just click the image below to pin it for easy referencing!

Plus, you can check out my “Spring” board on Pinterest for some more springtime fun for the classroom!

Don’t forget to head over to this post all about rain and the water cycle!  I’ve also included some ideas for a few of our favorite fiction stories about rain!

Here are some other great April read alouds and activities!