Make it Rain! Shaving Cream Cloud Activity

Spring is officially here and I am hoping that means more rain and less snow! While it can be tempting to stay inside on all of the rainy days, we are working toward 1,000 hours outside and will have to spend some time in the rain. To get the kids on board, I wanted to start by explaining where rain comes from and how clouds work.

We set up this simple and fun activity to start the conversation and it was a hit! The kids thought it was “so cool” and we got a little lesson in weather to boot. Keep reading to learn how to make your own shaving cream rain cloud at home- it’s easier than you think!

This activity is perfect for a rainy day. Keep these simple supplies on hand and you can set this up without any planning or prep work.

Here’s What You Need

• Shaving cream

• Food coloring

• Pipettes/droppers. You can use medicine droppers or 1/4 or 1/8 teaspoon if your little ones haven’t mastered a bulb syringe yet.

• Vase or other glass container

• Small bowls or cups

• Towel or baking sheet to keep any mess contained

• Water

• Smocks if your kids tend to get messy

Set up

2 minutes

1. Fill up your vase and your small bowls with water. I put everything on a baking tray to help keep clean up quick. Be sure to leave a few inches at the top of your vase for the shaving cream.

2. Have the kids add some food coloring to your small bowls to create fun colors. We kept ours limited to 3 colors total. Note: we used our less potent food coloring brand in order to preserve some of our more vivid food coloring for another activity. I would suggest sticking to your regular brand at home if you want to save a few pennies, but definitely check out the bright color one I linked if that is an option for you. It makes all of our projects so much more eye catching.

3. Top the vase with shaving cream and you are ready to make it rain.

4. Add the colored water drop by drop to the shaving cream and watch as the cloud creates “rain” when it becomes too heavy.

Clean Up

2-3 minutes

1. After you have created all the rain clouds you/your kids can handle, pour the liquid mess down the drain.

2. Rinse out and wash your vases, bowls, and pipettes.

3. Wash the baking tray.

This is one of those messy activities that actually clean up in 1-2 minutes. So you reach superhero status with the kids, but really don’t have to manage much of a mess at all! That pretty much sounds like a win in my book.

The baking tray under our activity was key though! I’ve done this before without the tray and was constantly wiping up food coloring, so just get out a giant bowl or sheet pan. I didn’t want to use the sensory bin for this because the walls were too high. I wanted the kids to see the “rain”, so something with low walls was necessary. And I can almost guarantee your kids will want to play with the shaving cream at the end, so set yourself up for success and make that messy play possible.

We used regular drinking glasses for our colored water. I’ve tried smaller bowls in the past and ended up running back and forth to the sink to refill them. This time I started with more water and avoided any refilling. This kept our colors pretty diluted, which was fine for our purposes. Any stray shaving cream or water on the wall or table wiped up easily and didn’t leave any stains. If you want more vidid colors, add more food coloring or use less water to start with. If you have a small cloud vessel, you might not need a lot.

Each of the big kids used a taller flower vase to hold their clouds, so I was anticipating going through more water. You can change up the cloud vessel to anything really, but clear glass works best. Flower vases, empty food jars, drinking glasses, food storage containers, or even small mixing bowls could all work. Have fun experimenting with the different shapes, just be sure to leave room at the top for the shaving cream. This also works best with a wide mouth to leave room to add the colored water.

The kids were amazed that they could create “rain” and wanted to keep adding more colored water to the clouds. This activity is easy to reset by simply dumping out your vase and starting over with water and a fresh “cloud” of shaving cream.

It was also really neat to see Brinley thinking and observing. I LOVE science and am enjoying watching her learn to love it as well. This activity also provides some great opportunities for fine motor control, hand-eye coordination, force pressure and impulse control, and patience! It takes more than just 2-3 drops to make the rain fall from the cloud, so we had a mini lesson in delayed gratification and perseverance.

Eventually the rain cloud vases became full of color and the raindrops were not visible any longer. The kids kept adding the colored water just to watch the shaving cream spill over the sides, which they thought was absolutely hilarious.

This activity is easy to set up for multiple kids and occupied everyone in our house for over 30 minutes. I hope you get a chance to try this one with the little ones in your life. Even if the kids are not quite understanding the rain cloud analogy, they will be mesmerized by the falling colors. Plus, they flow and repetition of using the droppers is always very calming for my children. I haven’t read any research on this in particular, but I find it to be true every single time we use the pipettes and there is some solid research on flow and repetition that fits in with this idea. Told you I love science!

I can’t wait for you to try this one at home. Please send this activity to a friend! Every click and share means so much and allows me to bring more content to you. Happy (official) spring!

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