Get ready for a hands-on weather activity! This shaving cream cloud experiment is a fun and easy way to show kids how clouds hold water until they become too heavy — and then it rains.
This simple rain cloud experiment with shaving cream creates a visual model of how precipitation forms and is perfect for spring science lessons, classrooms, or homeschool STEM.
Shaving Cream Cloud Experiment
Studying weather and experimenting with a foam rain cloud are fantastic ways to introduce kids to Earth Science. Earth Science includes the atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere.
Weather deals with the day-to-day changes in the atmosphere that directly impact our lives. Should I take a rain jacket to the playground?
💡 Let’s get to our simple rain cloud model and find out how clouds form rain. Alternatively, you can try this sponge rain cloud method.
STEM Concepts Explored:
- Weather Science (Meteorology) – Understanding how clouds form and how rain happens.
- The Water Cycle – Demonstrating condensation, saturation, and precipitation.
- States of Matter – Exploring how water changes from gas (water vapor) to liquid (rain).
- Gravity & Absorption – Seeing how water droplets build up until they become too heavy to stay in the cloud.
Recommended Grade Level: Preschool-3rd Grade
Supplies:
- A jar filled with water
- Shaving cream
- Eye dropper, syringe, droppers, or pipettes
- Liquid food coloring
- An extra bowl to mix the colored rainwater
How To Do the Shaving Cream Cloud Experiment
STEP 1: Squirt a fluffy shaving cream rain cloud on top of the water in your vase or jar. We made a huge rain cloud.
STEP 2: Mix up a separate bowl of water and blue drops of food coloring. I heavily tinted it blue to see our rain cloud in action. Choose whatever colors you want to try for your cloud.
STEP 3 Use the eyedropper to squeeze the colored water into the shaving cream cloud. In the above picture, you can see the bottom of the cloud is quite full of our rain.
STEP 4: Add rainwater to your cloud and watch the storm take shape!
💡 This shaving cream cloud experiment works because the shaving cream represents a cloud filled with water droplets.
How Clouds Hold Water
Clouds are made of tiny droplets of water floating in the air. These droplets form when water from lakes, rivers, and oceans is heated by the sun and turns into water vapor. As the water vapor rises into cooler air, it changes back into tiny drops of liquid water that gather together to form clouds.
As more water collects inside a cloud, the droplets grow larger and heavier. Eventually, the cloud becomes so full of water that it can no longer hold the droplets, and they fall to the ground as rain.
In this experiment:
• Shaving cream represents the cloud
• Colored water represents the water droplets
As the shaving cream fills with colored water, it becomes saturated and begins to drip. This helps demonstrate how clouds retain moisture until they can no longer hold it, leading to rainfall.
More Fun Weather Facts for Kids
- Clouds are made of billions of tiny water droplets or ice crystals.
- The tallest clouds can stretch 10 miles into the sky!
- Not all clouds produce rain—some are simply too thin or high up.
Weather Extension Activities
Extend this shaving cream rain cloud experiment with these simple weather investigations.
Explore the Water Cycle
This activity is a great way to visualize how water moves through the environment. Kids can see how evaporation, condensation, and precipitation work together as part of the water cycle.
🔎 Try our Water Cycle in a Bag experiment.
Learn About Cloud Formation
Use this experiment to start a conversation about different types of clouds. Why do some clouds look fluffy while others are flat or dark?
🔎 Explore clouds with our Cloud Viewer activity.
Measure Real Rainfall
Take weather science outside by building a simple rain gauge. Kids can measure how much rain falls during a storm and track weather patterns over time.
🔎 Make a DIY Rain Gauge for Kids.
Discover Types of Precipitation
Rain isn’t the only type of precipitation that falls from clouds. Talk about how snow, sleet, and hail form and when we see them in different seasons.
🔎 Learn more with our Winter Water Cycle activity.
Connect Weather to Daily Life
Weather science helps kids make real-world connections. Why do we need jackets some days and sunscreen on others? Hands-on activities like this make weather easier to understand.
🔎 Add our Free Printable Weather Tracker (below) to record daily weather observations.
Get your FREE Weather Science Guide!
More Fun Weather Activities
Introduce your kids to fun ways to explore the weather with the various weather activities below.
- Tornado in a Bottle
- Cloud In A Jar
- Make an Anemometer
- Weather Playdough Mats
- Homemade Weather Station
Printable Weather Project Packs
We have a Preschool Weather Project Pack and an Elementary Grades Weather Project Pack. Both are filled with grade appropriate hands-on activities, instructions, printables, and more.
Wow! What a brilliant idea! My toddler will be so amazed by this 🙂 Sharing on fb and pinning!!
I absolutely love this idea! Would it be ok if I used one of these pictures for a school project? It will go up on a website for a hypothetical children’s STEAM library program about weather. I will give you credit, of course!
Yes, that’s fine. Glad you like the idea. If it is going to be published on the internet, please add a link to this post! Thanks.
I was planning on doing so. Thank you very much!
Your welcome!
Is there a book that anyone has used to go along with this lesson?
This series of science books has always been a favorite: affiliate link: https://amzn.to/2LiQlWn