If you’re a regular here, you know that we’ve been studying clouds lately.  We had so much fun with our earlier experiment, creating a cloud in a jar, that the kids couldn’t wait to make it rain with their very own shaving cream rain cloud the next day. 

Materials Needed to Create Shaving Cream Rain Cloud:

• Clear glass or jar
• Water
• Shaving cream
• Food coloring or liquid watercolors (Make your own watercolors!)
• Eye dropper

To create your cloud, fill your clear container partially with water.  (About half full worked well for us.)

Then spray your shaving cream “cloud” on top of the water.

Once your cloud is formed, use the eye dropper to drip your liquid watercolors (or food coloring) onto the cloud.  (This is a great opportunity to talk about how clouds can only hold so much liquid.  As water droplets bump together and get larger, they eventually get too heavy for the cloud and fall as rain.)

I asked the kids to predict how many drops their cloud would be able to hold before it “rained.”  Then they counted carefully to see if their predictions were right.

Eventually, we were able to see our own rain shower!

We had so much fun learning about clouds, I am sure the rest of our weather unit is sure to be a hit!

The post Make a Shaving Cream Rain Cloud first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

This week we had lots of fun making our very own pastel-colored  DIY marbled paper made with shaving cream. 

You may also enjoy these spring crafts for tweens.  

Kids of all ages will have fun creating colorful marbled paper.  

This is a craft even preschoolers and tweens will enjoy doing together.  

If you’re looking for more fun ideas for a rainy day, check out how to make your own mud paint.  

Homemade Marbled Paper

Materials Needed:

• Shaving cream  (The dollar store is great for this!)
• A shallow tray or cake pan
• Liquid watercolor paints or food coloring
• Eye dropper
• White paper
• Piece of straight cardboard or a squeegee

The first step is to cover the bottom of your tray/cake pan with shaving cream.  

The kids had fun spraying the shaving cream, and once they had most of the bottom of the pan covered, we used a straight piece of cardboard to spread it out a bit more and smooth it out.

Next, use the eye dropper to drip the watercolors or food coloring onto the shaving cream.

Now for some fun!

Swirl the colors into the shaving cream.  You cold use a finger; mine chose to use the end of a paintbrush to do this.  (Be careful not to mix it too much, or the colors will become a grey blob.)

Once your colors are swirled, lay a piece of white paper on top and press down.

Carefully peel the paper off of the shaving cream.

Run the straight piece of cardboard or squeegee across the paper to remove the excess shaving cream.  You will have to do several sweeps to get it all off.

The color will remain on the paper!

Allow the paper to dry.  We set ours on metal baking racks and it was dry in a few hours.

Once it is completely dry, you have beautiful marbled paper!

We plan to use our paper to make pretty cards for family members this spring.

You could also use it as the background for another art project — using crayons to draw on it or cutting out magazine pictures to glue and making a collage.  Or, older kids might want to use it as stationery!

We found that you could make a second sheet of paper with the colors in the pan, but for best results (and more fun), it was better to start off with a fresh coat of shaving cream and color.

If your child likes this homemade marbled paper, they’ll also like:

• Recycled Magazine Butterflies
• Water Bottle Suncatcher
• Cardboard Box Robots

The post Homemade Marbled Paper first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

What do you do when you have five energetic kids stuck in the house?

Get out the shaving cream and let them go crazy with some basic shaving cream sensory play!

My kids have played with shaving cream a number of times.  It is ALWAYS a hit!

My daughter loved last summer’s whole body shaving cream experience and the Frozen-inspired sensory table… And when we had company over this week and she spotted the can of shaving cream I had stashed on the counter?

Well, I couldn’t resist introducing a whole new batch of kids to shaving cream sensory fun!

I started off by just squirting a little bit in front of each child.

They had fun squishing it and smearing it on the table, drawing pictures with their fingers, writing their names, and then smearing it to start all over again.

When they decided to work together to cover the whole table (this was a first here!), I got out miniature cars so they could see the tire marks each car left behind.

And just when our company was starting to think I was crazy for letting the kids cover the dining table in shaving cream…  I got out the food coloring.

Just a drop or two of food coloring gives the kids a whole new shaving cream experience!

They had fun mixing the colors and creating more shaving cream pictures.

And then I got a bit crazier….and sprinkled a bit of baking soda on the whole mess.

With a few sprays from my “magic squirt bottle”  (which was filled with vinegar and water), the colorful art work started to foam!

Of course the added liquid made it all a bit more slippery (a whole new sensory experience).

I bet by now you are wondering how clean up went.

Shaving cream is really pretty easy to clean up.

I usually wipe up as much as I can of it with dry paper towels before using a wet wash cloth.  As for the kids, I filled the sink with a bit of water and had them each walk to it with their hands in the air.  A quick dip in the water and a bit of rubbing and the shaving cream came right off, leaving the kids ready for whatever fun they’d find next.

(I’ll give you a secret:  If it’s just your own kids, let them play with the shaving cream in the bathtub!  All you need to do then is rinse the shaving cream down the drain and the kids are already in a convenient location for their own clean up, too!)

Have you ever let the kids play in shaving cream?

I’d love to hear how you’ve gotten creative with it in the comments!

The post Indoor Playdate Idea: Shaving Cream Sensory first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

(Related post:  Sand Foam)

Frozen Sensory Play

Keeping with the Frozen theme, I wanted that shaving cream good and cold!  So I emptied our ice cube tray into the water table.

(Can you tell we played with dirt in it earlier this week?)

I covered those ice cubes with a can of shaving cream for plenty of snow.  (For younger children, try our taste-safe cloud dough, perfect as pretend snow.)

And, because I was really trying to make a sensory experience my little girl would LOVE, I added plenty of glitter!

I added Anna and Elsa to complete the scene, and then it was time to call out my own little princess.

She loved the frozen shaving cream! 

“Mommy, the ice cubes and shaving cream are cold like real snow!”

As the ice cubes melted the whole thing became a cold, squishy world to play in, with a bit more glitter added from time to time!

At some point she recreated the scene with Anna climbing up the mountain to find her sister…

I think this Disney Frozen sensory play has become my daughter’s favorite sensory tub of all time.

And since it was outside, all we had to do was hose the shaving cream and glitter off when she was finished playing, making it one of my favorites, too!

More sensory play ideas you’ll love:

• 17 Frozen Sensory Play Ideas from The Chaos and the Clutter
• Simple to Make Bubble Dough
• Fairy Soup Pretend Play
• Ivory Soap Explosion
• Lesson Plans for Disney Movies

The post Sensory Play Inspired by the Movie Frozen first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

Shaving cream is a cheap and fun sensory item for kids to explore!

Usually I just squirt a bit on the kitchen table and they spread it out to draw or write letters, smear it to erase and start over.  (This is great for kids just learning to write and also perfect for practicing spelling words!)

Last year we added sand and even water beads to the shaving cream.  Both were big hits!

This week’s rain was the perfect time for some more shaving cream fun.   I decided to just squirt a bunch of shaving cream into our sensory bin and see what they did with it.

The kids couldn’t wait to get their hands into the fluffy whiteness!

The five year-old decided to push a few cars around in it.

But the six year-old went all out!

She started by covering her arms, loving the feel of the thick shaving cream clinging to her skin.

At some point she got a few play kitchen dishes to cook up some pies…  And then it was back to painting herself white!

She really liked trying to walk on the shaving cream covered plastic.  And, at some point, she even made shaving cream angels.  (Needless to say it was bath time when she finished!)

This is the first time she really had an opportunity to explore the shaving cream with her whole body, and she LOVED it!    It’s fun seeing  just how different kids are when it comes to playing with this stuff!

Have your children played in shaving cream before?  Are they careful in their approach (like my son), or are they an all-in kid like my daughter?

The post Shaving Cream Sensory Play first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

After making our rainbow cream pies, I was looking forward to exploring other shaving cream play ideas.  

And then it hit me.  (Or I hit it, when I walked into the sand and water table…)  Sand!   

This super simple sand and shaving cream mix is tons of fun.  It would be perfect as an outdoor summer sensory bin for preschoolers.  (But I guarantee older kids will love it, too.)

Making sand foam is perfect for summer.  Your child will also love our Frozen shaving cream play idea.  

Affiliate links have been used below.  For more information, see my full disclosure. 

Sand and Shaving Cream 

Start by pouring several cups of play sand into a large, shallow container.  We used an empty under the bed storage container.  

Then spray a bunch of shaving cream on top of the sand.  Seriously, it’s that easy.  

Mix the shaving cream and sand together.  

You can use a spoon, but it is so much fun for the kids to use their hands for this.  

Keep adding shaving cream as needed until you wind up with a nice, fluffy, sandy texture.  (It reminds me a bit of that whipped butter and cinnamon/sugar mix they put on sweet potatoes at some restaurants.)

While you can use plain, dollar store shaving cream, it is even more fun with a scented variety, like this raspberry shaving cream.  

Your child will have fun piling it into their hands, mixing it, and just feeling it.  It has a seriously awesome texture.  

You can also add small construction trucks to the play, tiny dishes (as long as the kids are old enough to know not to eat it), or toy animals.

As the children explore and play with the mixture you can add in more shaving cream as needed.

As I said earlier, even older kids will like this one.  My niece kept telling me it was the “best time” she’d had at our house  — pretty high compliments from a 7 year-old.  

Sand and shaving cream (also called sand foam) is a fun summer sensory experience your kids will love.  

Let the kids have fun with these other ideas:

• Apple-Scented Bubble Dough
• Shark Party Games
• Subtraction Squish Math Activity 

The post Sand Foam: Awesome 2 Ingredient Sensory Play first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.