The rain

Fig 1: Splashing in the rain

	When it rains the sky is returning water to the Earth. The Earth has a constant amount of water.
Fig 2: Car driving through a large puddle.

Water falls to the Earth as rain or snow.
	Fig 3: Duck paddling in a small puddle.

	Water goes back into the sky as vapour. As this gets colder it turns into tiny drops of water, which make the clouds. As the drops get heavy, they start to fall as rain, or snow if it is very cold.
Fig 4: Sheltering under an umbrella.

This is called the water cycle. This gives a steady flow of fresh water.
	Fig 5: Sheltering from the rain.

Things to do

Draw some big raindrops and write a rainy word inside each one.

Paint a picture of what you can see outside your window when it is raining.

Have you heard this nursery rhyme before?

Incey Wincey spider climbed up the water spout,
Down came the rain and washed poor Incey out.
Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain,
So Incey Wincey spider climbed up the spout again.

Things to make

Fig 6: A simple rain gauge.

A RAIN MEASURE

You will need:

• an empty plastic bottle;
• scissors;
• tape.

Cut off the top of a lemonade bottle. Turn it upside down, and fit it inside the bottom half of the bottle.

Mark a scale on a piece of tape using a ruler. Fix it to the bottle. Push your measure into the ground.

Look at it at the end of every day.

Measure the amount of rain you have collected.

Look at a raindrop. How big is it? Put a drop of water over a word. What can you see?

For the record

Make a record of how much rain your measure collects in a day, a week, a month.

Try putting your measure in different places. Which is the best place to collect the rain and why?

Did you know?

Heavy rain can cause floods. One hundred years ago, one million people died when the banks of the Yellow River in China burst.

In February 2007, La Reunion (a small volcanic island lying in the Indian Ocean, some 800 km east of Madagascar) broke several rainfall records when Tropical Cyclone Gamede deposited over 5.4 m of rainfall on the island - in less than seven days!