April showers bring May flowers -- and lots of puddles! How are puddles formed? Help your child find out by baking a puddle into a cake.

What You Need

• flour
• cocoa
• salt
• brown sugar
• baking soda
• oil
• vanilla
• vinegar
• greased and floured baking pan
• sifter
• oven (preheat to 350 degrees)

What You Do

• Talk with your child about what happens outside when it rains. Tell your child that you would like him to help you make a special kind of cake -- a puddle cake -- and ask him to think about why the cake might have this name.

• Help your child measure and sift the following dry ingredients into the baking pan: 1 1/2 cups flour, 3 tbsp cocoa, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 cup brown sugar, and 1 tsp baking soda. Make a well in the center. Together, measure and pour the following wet ingredients into the well: 6 tbsp oil, 1 tsp vanilla, and 1 tbsp vinegar.

• Talk about why and how this makes a puddle. Invite your child to dip his finger into the puddle to check how deep it is. Then let him pour 1 cup water into the well to make an even bigger puddle. Help him stir everything together. Bake the cake for 15-20 minutes.

• As the puddle cake bakes, experiment with other ways to make puddles. Pour water onto a flat surface, into an egg carton, or into different-sized bowls. Discuss how these puddles are similar and different. Then enjoy your tasty snack!

More Ways to Learn

Take a wet walk. On a rainy day, go on a nature exploration. Talk about how the rain changes the way things like soil and plants look and feel. Afterward, you might want to write a poem together or draw pictures about what you experienced during your walk.

Create puddle paintings. For this fun art activity, all you'll need is finger-paint paper, food coloring, and a straw. Help your child mix different colors of food coloring into separate bowls filled with water. Let him spoon the watercolors onto the paper to create puddles, which he can then blow on with a straw to create lots of swirls and other fun designs.

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Take a look at the Spanish version of this activity.