Where Rain Comes From

Rain starts with water and the warm sun. Here’s a simple step-by-step way to understand it:

1. The sun warms up water in oceans, lakes, and puddles. The water turns into invisible vapor (like steam) and rises up — we call this evaporation.
2. The vapor cools and makes clouds. Up high the air is cooler, so the tiny bits of water stick together and make very small drops — that is a cloud.
3. The drops join together and get bigger inside the cloud. When they get heavy, they fall to the ground as rain.
4. Where the clouds go matters. Sometimes clouds go over mountains or get colder and that helps the drops fall.

Think of a cloud like a wet sponge in the sky. When the sponge holds too much water, the water falls out as drops — that’s the rain.

Try this safe observation at home: on a sunny day watch a small puddle. After some time the puddle gets smaller because the sun makes the water go up into the air (evaporation). That is one part of how rain forms!

Do you want to draw the water going up and the cloud to show how rain is made?