Shaving Cream and Liquid Watercolors Experiments

 

 

If you’ve read my recent post about how we made Marbled Pumpkins decorations, you know how much E enjoyed the craft. She kept asking for more, and since we already had just about all the pumpkins we could handle, I just put out the shaving cream and liquid watercolors with a stack of construction paper for her and sat back to watch her play with the materials in whatever way she wanted.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of the materials.

(E was 35 months old.)

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Her exploration of the craft materials started when E ended our Drip Painting on Ice activity by suddenly requesting I put shaving cream on a towel for her. The ice cubes were forgotten, and she spent some time making prints with the plain shaving cream and scraping it off, just like we did when we did our marbling crafts. Of course, she also included some sensory exploration as well.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of the materials.

 

 

The next morning, E went for the construction paper again and asked to make more prints. We still had liquid watercolors in a muffin tin left over from the ice painting activity, so I let her use them with the eye droppers from that activity. {We had used liquid watercolors straight from the bottle for the Marbled Pumpkins craft.}

She actually sprayed the shaving cream on the tray herself for the first time! I was surprised and admittedly not purely happy, as I’d sort of counted on her not being able to work the mechanism yet until that moment 😉 Her hand did get tired after she’d covered about half the tray, and she asked me to do the rest.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

She started dripping liquid watercolors on an area of the shaving cream with her eye dropper

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

and thought it was hilarious to put dots of shaving cream in her face.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

She did one print where she scraped off the shaving cream like when we did the craft.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

After that, she didn’t bother with the scraping anymore.

Instead, she let the shaving cream soak in properly while amusing herself with the back of the paper.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

It still looked nice when she finally pulled the paper from the shaving cream, even if not too many colors had made it onto the sheet.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

For the next sheet, she piled the watercolors on the back of the paper and watched them run into each other.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

She ended the activity with more sensory exploration of the colored shaving cream.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

I love the effect of the colors on the white shaving cream – beautiful every time!

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors..

 

I decided to simply let the sheets dry as they were, since E had chosen not to scrape the shaving cream off.

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors.

 

This is what they looked like after about 24 hours:

 

Extending a craft E loves with free exploration of shaving cream and liquid watercolors.

 

I quite liked the hazy white effect, especially on the sheet with all the liquid watercolors on the back, some of which had bled through.

Please note that the shaving cream should pretty much stay this way indefinitely but it does come off when handled. Of course, this was always meant to be all about the process – but I’m definitely still hanging up some of these for a while to remind us of all the fun!

 

 

 

Have you played with shaving cream lately? What does your child like to do with it? Write a comment below!

 

 

 

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8 Comments

  1. Emma @ P is for Preschooler says:

    We haven’t played with shaving cream in awhile, but this activity sure looks like messy fun! My daughter was asking for shaving cream play just yesterday so I’m adding this one to my to-do list!

    1. Thank you, Emma! Sounds great, let me know how your daughter likes it!

  2. This looks superb! Could you share your daughter’s age please? Thanks.
    I think I can use liquid food colours since my daughter is 19 months old.

    1. My daughter is 35 months old. You can definitely use food coloring in place of the liquid watercolors. If you want to replace the shaving cream as well, you can go for whipped cream, pudding or yogurt.

      Let me know how it works out for you!

  3. The last thing we did with shaving cream was use it in a “cleaning rocks” activity, haha. I’ve got it in drafts at the moment all ready to post. We love shaving cream here too. So easy and fun! Thanks for linking this post to Tuesday Tots. Just letting you know I’m featuring it this week on Learn with Play at Home 🙂

    1. Ooh, that sounds like fun, can’t wait to read your post! And thanks so much for stopping by and featuring my post!

  4. We’ve done this one before, it was a huge hit …. got so messy had to grab everything and plonk the boys in the bathtub to continue playing! Hehe

    1. My daughter has definitely ended up with shaving cream all over before and gone straight to the bathtub 😉 These days, she’s a bit more restrained – but I’m sure that’ll change again in the future.