Questions kids askSky and weather
Where does rain come from?
Rain is water that the Sun’s warmth lifted into the air as invisible vapor, which cooled into cloud droplets that joined together until they were heavy enough to fall.
How to explain it, by age
This is how Pukki answers the question, once for each of the five age bands it speaks to. Pukki is a voice-first AI encyclopedia for kids: a child asks out loud, and it gives a short spoken answer made for their age.
For a 3- or 4-year-old
Rain comes from clouds. Tiny drops join together, get heavy, and fall down to Earth. It is like water drops falling from a wet sky.
For a 5- or 6-year-old
Rain comes from tiny drops of water in clouds. The Sun warms puddles and seas, and the water rises as invisible vapour because warm water turns into gas. High up, it cools into drops that join together and fall as rain. Can you spot a cloud that might be carrying rain?
For a 7- or 8-year-old
Rain comes from water in the air. Sunlight warms rivers, lakes, and oceans, turning some water into invisible vapour that rises, cools into tiny drops, and falls when the drops join together.
For a 9- or 10-year-old
Rain comes from water vapour rising into the air, where it cools and turns into tiny drops inside clouds. When the drops join together and become heavy, gravity pulls them down as rain. A big cloud can hold millions of raindrops.
For an 11- or 12-year-old
Rain comes from water vapour in the air. Sunlight warms water in oceans, lakes, and soil, so some of it rises as an invisible gas; high in the cooler air, it gathers into tiny drops inside clouds, and when the drops become heavy enough, they fall as rain.
A little more, for you
Water is always evaporating from oceans, lakes and soil and rising as vapor. Higher up the air is cooler, and the vapor condenses into droplets so small that they float. A cloud is an enormous number of them.
A cloud droplet is far too light to fall. Droplets have to collide and merge, and it takes millions of them to make a single raindrop heavy enough to reach the ground.
Questions to ask them
- What does the sky look like just before it rains?
- Where does a puddle go when the Sun comes out?
- Where do you think the water in a cloud came from?
These two parts are ours. In the app, Pukki writes its own for every answer, under “Explain it to me” and “Ask them back”.
Try it together
Watch a puddle disappearNotice how a puddle slowly dries after sunlight warms it.
Pukki’s own idea, given to the parent with one of the answers above.
One more why
Where these answers come from
We asked Pukki this question ourselves, once for each age, on 2 October 2026. No child’s question is published here. The answers are written by AI, and we read each one against the sources below. None of the five needed a change.
Pukki’s answers vary from one asking to the next, and can be wrong. It answers in the English its device is set to; these were asked in Indian English. Today Pukki also ends most answers with a short question on the same topic, which a parent can turn off.
Read against these sources on 5 October 2026.