For the last few weeks it has been raining off and on here and my ever-curious daughter, Briana asked me while driving home from school one day what makes rain. I tell her that rain comes from when water on the ground like in lakes gets hot and floats up into the sky. That’s called evaporation. The floating water is called water vapor. Then if the water vapor gets really cold, it will stick together and turn into a cloud. That’s called condensation. If the cloud gets warm then it will evaporate again and the cloud will go away and there will be a nice clear sky. If the cloud gets cold with all of that water in it, it will get heavy and turn back into water and fall back onto the ground as rain. That’s called precipitation. If it gets really, really cold then the rain turns into snow. Then all of the rain on the ground forms lakes and oceans and that’s called collection. So a cloud is really just a lot of tiny drops ...
I am teaching my kids everything from math to reading to manners, and blogging about our weekly thinking cap adventures.