How to make rainbow rain!

No wellies needed for this rainy day activity

Rainbow-coloured rain
by Sara Conway

Prepare to earn yourself some serious cool points when you show your child this fascinating rain cloud experiment. It's a little bit messy so you'll need to clear some space, but we promise it's worth it once you see the results!


Rather watch than read? Hit play on the video below to see how this experiment works!

You will need

  • A glass
  • Water
  • Food colouring
  • Shaving foam

How to do this rain cloud experiment

Step 1

Start by filling the glass ¾ full of water. Now, ask your child to create a cloud on top with a good squirt of shaving foam.

Step 2

Fill the cloud with rain by adding a few drops of food colouring. As the cloud fills up and gets heavier, rain will fall down – just like a real cloud!

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Creativity

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Science

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Communication

Learning guide

Another rainy day at home? This experiment is a brilliant way to help your child understand where all that rain is actually coming from. As you might (vaguely) remember from your own geography or science lessons at school, clouds are formed when water vapour rises into the air. When the clouds get so full of water that they can’t hold any more, the water falls and becomes rain. Little ones will see this come to life when they fill their ‘cloud’ of shaving foam with droplets of food colouring. You could also mix different colours together to create new ones – can your child guess what will happen when they mix blue with red?