Summer has officially arrived and it’s one of our favorite seasons! We love all of the extra outdoor fun that summertime has to offer…swimming pools, water tables, squirt guns, picnics…the list goes on and on. But in our neck of the woods, summertime often includes afternoon thunderstorms. You can pretty much guarantee an afternoon storm on any given day. In fact, these past few weeks we’ve had some pretty severe thunderstorms roll through…hail, loads of rain, flood warnings, bright bolts of lightning, and earth-shaking thunder. On one such stormy afternoon, we decided…if you can’t beat them, join them! So, we gathered in a dark room to create the most amazing Shaving Cream Thunderstorms!
We’ve always enjoyed making shaving cream rain clouds…it was one of the very first shaving cream activities that we ever did with our little nugget. She loves spraying a giant cloud of shaving cream on top of a vase full of water, and watching all of the colored rain (food coloring) pour down!
The shaving cream rain clouds are so fantastic, I never dreamed that they could get any better. That is, until I came across @happi_crafts Electric Shaving Cream Cloud post, over on Instagram! As it turns out, you can create a breathtaking shaving cream thunderstorm, simply by replacing the food coloring with glow stick liquid. GENIUS!
I’ve never seen our little nugget so content, sitting in a dark room for so long (unless she’s sleeping, of course). π We were both completely mesmerized as we dripped various colors of glowing liquid out of our pipettes and onto the shaving cream cloud. Each drop of liquid brought life to the dark clouds, creating the most magical and colorful lightning show! And every so often, a glowing liquid raindrop would cascade down through the water…pooling up and lighting up the glass from below.
You’re welcome for our daughter’s musical contribution to the above video. She just recently watched Shrek, for the first time, and she loves singing the song “Hallelujah” from the movie (even when she has the hiccups). π
Shaving Cream Thunderstorms
Supplies:
- Glass/Vase/Jar
- Water
- Shaving Cream
- Glow Sticks (We purchased this pack from Party City)
- Scissors
- Small Cups/Containers
- Pipettes
Instructions:
- Start by filling your glass/vase/jar approximately 1/2 to 3/4 full with water.
- Choose the glow sticks that you would like to use, and gently bend/crack them so that the liquid inside starts to glow.
- Using a pair of sharp scissors (this step should be done by an adult), carefully cut the glow sticks open and empty the liquid contents into the small cups/containers. Use one container per color. Since our glow sticks are so long and thin, I ended up cutting them into multiple pieces, so that the liquid would pour out faster.
- Once you have all of your liquid in small containers, transfer all of your supplies to a room that you can make completely dark. Set your water-filled glass on a flat surface, and spray a generous amount of shaving cream on top of the water (creating your clouds).
- Carefully suck the glowing liquid up into a pipette. Slowly squeeze drops on top of the shaving cream clouds.
- Stand back and watch as the lightning bolts begin to light up the night sky!
- Continue dripping various colors of liquid onto the shaving cream cloud…until you’re completely satisfied with the look of your thunderstorm, or (more likely) until you run out of liquid.
- Watch as the electric droplets cascade down into the water and pool up at the bottom of the glass.
- And if you’re anything like us…repeat the entire activity over, and over again! π
This simple activity was simply AWESOME! Who would have thought that a toddler would want to sit in a dark room for more than 45 minutes, dropping liquid from a pipette into a glass full of water and shaving cream? Who would have thought that an adult would sign up for that either? π We were having so much fun creating our thunderstorms, that time completely escaped us, and the stormy weather outside became irrelevant.
This activity also provided a great opportunity for us to chat about all of the rain, hail, and lightning that we had witnessed recently…not to mention all of the booming thunder that had filled our ears.
Storm clouds contain lots of particles of ice and water. When the particles bump into each other, they develop an electric charge. When the clouds become full of electricity, the electricity moves from the clouds to the ground below…causing a bright flash of light that we call lightning. Lightning is extremely hot…hotter than the surface of the sun. As lightning shoots down to the ground, it heats up the air around it. When air gets that hot, that fast, it explodes…creating the sound we call thunder.
You always hear thunder after you see lightning, but did you know that they actually occur at the same time? We observe the two separately, because light travels faster than sound.
I remember when I was little, I always liked counting the seconds between the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder, during a thunderstorm. For every second that passes, the storm is approximately one mile away. As a thunderstorm moves closer, the amount of time that passes between the lightning and thunder grows smaller. As the storm moves farther away, the amount of time increases.
Thunderstorms are incredible…whether they are outside…or in a glass. π
