Rain cloud craft

This rain cloud craft involves more than just painting the rain. It actually simulates rain coming down. In fact, if you make enough rain on your paper, you’ll even create a small lake at the bottom!

Note: You’ll find more weather-related activities on my Weather Unit Study page. 

To make this rain cloud craft, you will need the following materials:

• White glue
• Water
• Blue liquid watercolor paint
• Watercolor paper
• Plastic pipette
• Cotton balls
• Small container
• Tray
• Books, boxes, or other items you can use to prop the tray up so it is tilted at an angle of approximately 30 degrees

Begin by pouring some white glue into your container.  Add blue liquid watercolor paint for color and a bit of water to reduce the viscosity of the glue. Mix the ingredients together until it turns into a light blue, slightly runny glue mixture.

Place a sheet of watercolor paper onto a tray, and use books or boxes to prop the tray up to an angle of about 30 degrees.

Draw some of the blue mixture into the plastic pipette. Gently squeeze the pipette to leave small drops of “rain” at the top of the paper.

If the mixture is right, the rain will slowly run down the page.

As you can see in the image below, the first rain drops we made on the paper didn’t run down, meaning that our mixture was too thick.

You may have to add a bit more water if your mixture is too thick or a bit more glue if it is too runny. You can also adjust the tilt of the tray. It may take a bit of experimenting to get the mixture right.

Continue adding more rain to your paper until you are satisfied.

Now it is time to add the clouds. Use glue to stick cotton balls to the top of the paper.

Let the paper dry, then remove it from the tray. Our “rain” was a bit runny so we ended up with a bit of a lake at the bottom of the paper, but that only gave the craft more character.

More weather resources

More weather posts from Gift of Curiosity:

• Rain stick craft
• Books about the weather
• Weather 3-part cards
• DIY weather station
• Water cycle demonstration
• Two ways to make a cloud in a jar
• Cloud classification activities
• Cloud classification craft
• DIY weather vane
• Wind resistance experiment
• Make a tornado in a bottle
• How do hurricanes form?
• Make a hurricane
• Printable weather Bingo game
• Printable weather I Spy game