Sensory sessions!!! Shaving foam fun!!!

I am becoming a self taught expert in the field of sensory play. I have been spending hours and hours searching the internet and pestering my teacher friends for their new and old ideas on sensory play for my kiddlets.

Keeping the little people interested and finding new ideas has been challenging to say the least. The other problem is cost. I have found some amazing ideas that I simply can’t do because of the cost involved. So cheap is always good, free is even better.

This sensory play session is one of the cheapest I have come across. It does however involve a little bit of a mess, I would recommend having a nice warm bath ready to go afterwards. Or you could even put the kids in the bath to do this activity to begin with.

What you need:
• can of shaving foam (cheap is absolutely fine)
• food dye or natural food colours

That’s it. Simply spray the foam into a plastic container or tray. I gave each of my girls a little mountain each. Then just add some different colour food dye to each patch of foam. That’s all there is to it.

Of course like anything that involves food dye you can mix the colours and teach the kids about prime colours, you can add extra colours but don’t mix them all the way through and make a rainbow. We stuck with simple pink and blue today as that’s the colours the girls chose.

You can add glitter, then it becomes sparkle foam. The girls absolutely loved the sparkle foam. Little warning, the glitter does go everywhere, so as I said, maybe have a bath ready to go. Even after a clean up, I’m still finding the tiny shiny stuff everywhere.

Miss 1 loved the idea but I’m not sure she was a fan of the foam being stuck to her fingers. She tried to shake it off and tried to wipe it, she was much happier once I took her and rinsed her hands however she went straight back to play with it some more.

Miss 3 liked to and I quote “Smoosh” the foam. She spent the whole time repeating the word “smoosh” over and over again. She loved mixing in he glitter and just like her sister, wanted her hands washed but was straight back into it. I think next time I will have a bowl of warm water for them to rinse with and then they can continue to play.

I honestly thought that his would be a quick sensory activity for the girls to do, I was wrong. They absolutely loved playing with the foam and were up at the table for more than an hour. Even when i began to pack away they were asking for more time.

This activity was a hit. It provided sensory input for touch, sight, sound and smell (the girls have have a lovely minty smell about them now). Shaving foam play can also be expanded to include so many more ideas. You can use it to paint on windows and watch the light pass through. You can encourage the children to make different shapes with the foam.

You can even seperate into little containers and add a different colour to each and let the kids paint each other with soft paint brushes. I felt my girls were a bit young for that but older children will think it’s great. You could even let them paint you if you don’t trust them painting each other.

Bonus with this sensory play activity is that although it is messy it is really easy to clean up. A bit of warm water and your all done. Only downside is constant supervision is required for little ones especially if they have a tendency to put things in their mouths. Trust me, we don’t want them eating foam and glitter.

This was so quick to set up and pack away I think it may become a favour of mine. The fact the girls wander to continue to play long after I had was ready to pack up was also a winner, it’s usually the other way around.

If you have any other ideas involving shaving foam sensory play, I would love to hear them. Please leave a comment below to share with everyone.

Thanks for reading.

@mumofmany.