Shaving Cream

My son is very tactile, so I thought letting him play with shaving foam would be a great way for him to experience how it feels. I also taught him to mix colours to see what effect it would have as well as making Art. He is 4 years and 9 months old.

Materials: Shaving cream,  washable painting, painting brushes, baking pan covered with aluminium foil and leaves.

At first I put shaving cream on the tray and ask him to touch it and tell me what it feels like. 

He liked playing with it, he said it was fresh and soft.

He drew the initial of his name and a boy.

After that, I put colours on the foam and asked him to take his painting brush and mix it gently. He said that all the colours looked beautiful together :).

Then he started making circles around it. I asked him to stop mixing it as I wanted to try something fun.

I put a paper on top of the foam and asked him to press it down slowly with his little hands for a couple of minutes. I wanted to see the result of it. I read this activity on Shannon's Tot School website and thought it was quite nice.

He slowly removed the paper and that was the final result. He was pleased with it. We set the paper aside on another tray to dry.

As we also had worked with leaves today, I suggested to my son that we could pretend we were Scientists and make experiments. I asked him to take a few leaves, and mix it on the shaving cream, and squeeze it to see whether or not the foam would turn green. He loved the idea of being a Scientist so he was squeezing it really hard to accomplish his mission :).

Unfortunately, the foam didn't turn green, so he decided to make a boy with the squeezed leaves. He said it was his dad :).

This was a great and fun project, and I highly recommend it. Playing with shaving cream was quite messy, but my son really enjoyed it. He didn't like having his hands dirty for a long time, so every time we would finish a project, he would wash his hands :).

Note: As it was our first time playing with shaving cream, I didn't want to scrape the foam off the coloured paper as we wanted to see the final result. After waiting for a few hours, we were really pleased with it. It was a great piece of Art, we loved the texture and the colours.