Make a Thunderstorm with Play Dough

My son thought it was so neat when I invited him to make a thunderstorm with play dough. We have been learning about thunderstorms and this was a great way to extend the learning.

Make a Thunderstorm with Play Dough. A fun preschool science activity!

The other day I tried to make black play dough for an activity and it ended up gray. It looked like the clouds you see during a thunderstorm. Then it dawned on me. We should use it to make a thunderstorm.

Evan has shown a lot of interest in rain, lightning and thunder. We even checked out a bunch of books at the library about thunderstorms. So I knew this would be the perfect hands-on extension activity for all that he was learning.

Materials Needed:

  • Gray play dough (I used about half of a small bottle of black food coloring.)
  • Blue and white play dough
  • Yellow pipe cleaners

Gray, blue and white play dough plus yellow pipe cleaners and you can make a thunderstorm

Making a Play Dough Thunderstorm

I laid all of the materials out on a tray and invited Evan to make a thunderstorm. I explained that he could use the pipe cleaners to make lightning, the blue play dough to make rain drops and the white play dough to make hail.

Bend yellow pipe cleaners so that they look like lightening bolts and insert them into the play dough

He was very excited by this and got right to work. He was very interested in making lightning bolts with the yellow pipe cleaners. He kept adding them until he ran out and his gray cloud was covered with them. He kept commenting on how many lightning strikes his thunderstorm had.

Add blue play dough raindrops and white play dough for hail.

Eventually, he added the rain drops and the hail. In the end, he had made a pretty awesome play dough thunderstorm!

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