When Life Gives You Puddles, Splash in Them!
Could you walk over to the window and look outside? What is the weather like? Is it sunny, cloudy, windy – or is it raining? It’s April, so there’s a good chance that it’s raining. Have you heard the saying ‘April showers bring May flowers’? That’s because all plants need rain to grow.
Where Does Rain Come From?
We only have a finite amount of water on our planet, Earth. The sun heats up all the water on Earth’s surface – water in seas, oceans, lakes, ponds, streams and even puddles. When it gets warmer, the water evaporates and turns into water vapour. (Think about boiling a kettle: the water inside is a liquid, but when the kettle boils, steam comes out of its spout. The water has changed from a liquid to steam.)
The water vapour rises up into the air. As it gets higher up, the air gets cooler, and the water vapour cools down and turns back into water droplets. Lots of these droplets bunch up together and form larger water droplets, then they form a cloud. Eventually, they become too heavy to stay up in the cloud and the droplets fall to Earth as rain. Then the water cycle begins again, with the sun heating up all the water…
Rain falls almost everywhere on our planet, but some places get a lot more rain than others! One of the world’s wettest places is Mount Waialeale in Hawaii. It rains almost every day there (about 350 days out of 365), and about 1,170 centimetres of rain fall there every year. Wow! Rainforests also have lots and lots of rain. Why not take a look at one here?
One of the driest places on Earth is the Atacama Desert in Chile. In some parts of this desert, it hasn’t rained for hundreds of years!
How much rain do you have where you live? Find out all about rain and the water cycle here!
Fun Things to Do in the Rain
It’s fun to wrap up warmly in your wellies and raincoat and go out in the rain. Why not see who can find the biggest puddle to splash in? You might find some worms – they come up from under the soil when it rains hard, in case their holes get flooded. Be careful you don’t step on them!
Racing Raindrops
If it’s raining too hard to go outside, why not watch raindrops chasing down a window? They’re very soothing to watch. Do they go in a straight line, or do they zigzag? With a friend, sibling or parent/carer, each choose a raindrop and see whose raindrop gets to the bottom of the window first!
Here are some more ideas for fun things to do in the rain. And some ideas for songs to sing about rain… And some ideas for fun indoor adventures for a really rainy day.
After the Rain, a Rainbow!
Have you ever seen a rainbow? Aren’t they beautiful? Rainbows often appear after rain. They’re caused by the sun shining through water. This water could be rain, or it could be mist or spray. You often see a rainbow in the mist coming off a waterfall, for example. The light bends when it shines through the water, and this causes all the amazing colours that we see in a rainbow!
Do you know what all the colours are? They’re red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
Rain, Rain, Don’t Go Away!
So, next time it rains, don’t be sad – think of all the flowers and plants soaking up all the water they need to make them grow. If you have any spare buckets or containers, you could place them in your garden during a rainstorm, then use the water that collects in them to water your plants. Or you could even make your own rain gauge, and measure how much rain falls!
Happy splashing!