Sensory & Art: Shaving Cream Body Painting

It's fitting that my first post to this new blog is about an extremely fun, messy, sensory & art project: my two favorites combined into one! My three & four year old class absolutely loved this activity today, and even the four & five year old class enjoyed it.

What You Will Need:
-1 or 2 cans of shaving cream (I used the sensitive skin kind that's $1.14 at Walmart)
-Washable Fingerpaint in any color you want (red paint tends to leave a stain no matter how washable it claims to be-- we stuck to blue, yellow, and green).
- Water
-Small containers to mix in and paint from
-Paint brushes, but it's also fun to just use your hands
-A hose and baby soap for clean up!

Here's how we made the paint (yes, we-- my kiddos are always involved in the whole process of the activity! However, I should have put them into their messy shirts to do this).

1. Squirt some shaving cream into the bowl.

2. Add a spoonful of finger paint.

3. Add a little bit of water to make it the consistency you want. (Add no water-- you get a "cottage cheese like" consistency, add a little water for smoother texture, a lot for a soupy mess.)

4. Stir it up until it's mixed evenly.

We made 12 small bowls of paint, this was probably enough for my 15 kiddos, but we were being joined by another 14 kiddos from another class, so in hindsight, I needed to probably double what we made. (Mental note for next time.)

While they changed into their swimsuits of course I let them play in the shaving cream! :)

They made a pretty big mess, but it was okay-- it was a clean mess. :) These two figured out they could write in the shaving cream and decided to "write their names".

Next we took our shaving cream paint and paintbrushes outside and got to it. I apologize for not taking pictures of what the paint looked like, but when you have 15 preschoolers ready to go, they are ready to go with or without you!

They needed little instructions and dove right in. To keep it simple, they could only paint their trunks (no faces) and only themselves. Even those 2 rules were easy to follow with this activity. I wish I didn't have to blur their faces because the smiles on their faces were priceless. I can say with 110% certainty they enjoyed every moment of this activity.

Some of the final "products":

When we ran out of paint, we just hosed them off and used a tiny bit of baby soap to clean them up. The paint came off their skin and suits cleanly with no stains.

So what exactly did they learn?
I believe in art as a process over a product (craft) so this was mostly an art experience using a slightly different medium (puffy, smooth paint) and their own body as the canvas.

To tie in learning we talked about the colors they chose to use, body parts, how it felt to paint with the brush, how the paint smelled differently, what happened when we mix two colors together, and what happened when we rinsed the paint off.

Overall, this was most definitely an experience in self-control for some of my boys-- painting only their trunk and not painting other kids or the playground equipment. And as anyone knows who works with preschoolers, self-control is a big deal developmentally.

If you try this out, please leave a comment and let me know how it went for you! Also, don't forget to follow this blog... it's still in it's infancy, but I promise more fun activities! :)

Until Next Time,

** You have my permission to pin this post, but please do not pin the pictures with my kiddos in them. Pin the top picture with the text. Thank you!! :)