How do the clouds make rain?

One rainy day on the way to school, we had this conversation:

Allie: “Mommy, how do the clouds make rain?”

Me: “Um, well (I fumbled) water evaporates and gravity makes it come down.”

(Why is it that the easiest questions can be the hardest ones to answer?)

Allie: “What is evaporates?  Can you turn on my music until we get to school?”

I felt like I had let my budding scientist down.  So after a little research, I decided I was going to show her how the clouds make rain.

The experiment I found explained the cycle of water using a stove top, a pan, ice, and a tea pot. Perfect! My favorite kind of experiment – no mess and big impact!  When I picked her up from school I told her we were going to make rain!  She was sold.

Question: How do the clouds make rain?

Plan:

First, we were going to fill up a teapot with water and heat it to make steam. (I told her the tea pot was like the oceans and streams that are heated up by the sun.)

Second, we would fill up a smaller pan with ice and hold it over the steam. (The steam is like the clouds that would cool on the cold pan because it is cold above the clouds.)

Her guess: (This is when I asked Allie what she thought would happen.) She was convinced that it was going to rain inside our house!

What happened? (This is when I attempt to use science to explain the result to her – in her terms.)

It did rain in our house that day – just on the stove of course! After a few minutes the steam cooled, collected on the cold pan, and started dripping “rain” down.  I explained that this is how water goes around and around on earth. It’s called the water cycle.

We ended up making a little song up about the water cycle. It goes a little something like this:

The sun heats up the ocean,

The steam goes in the sky,

The steam makes clouds and the rain comes down.

The sun heats up the ocean,

The steam goes in the sky,

The steam makes clouds and the rain comes down.

Seriously, I think the water cycle song impressed her more than the experiment because I was waving my arms around in circles and jumping up and down. The things I do to help my daughter love science!