What you Need:
  • A large jar
  • Small cups for food colour
  • Gel food colouring or washable watercolours
  • Shaving Cream (not a gel version)
  •  Droppers

 

Directions:
  1. In a small cup, mix the food coloring with some water
  2. Fill the large jar with water until it is about 3/4 full.
  3. Place the jar and the cups of colored water on the table. Place a pipette in each cup of colored water.
  4. Right before the kids are ready to do the experiment, spray a bunch of shaving cream in the jar until it is just a small bit above the top of the jar.
  5. Ask the kids to pick up some colored water with a pipette and squirt it on top of the shaving cream cloud. Repeat this step one or two more times but pay close attention to what is happening below the cloud!

The colored water will begin to seep down through the shaving cream and into the water below. Just like rain!

How it Works

The shaving cream represents the clouds, and the water represents the air. The colored water represents rain. As the colored water saturates the “cloud”, it gets heavy and eventually is so heavy that it can no longer hold the water. It “rains” down into the jar – through the “air.” It is just like real rain falls through the air.