Fun with Shaving Cream

I saw a cool idea on Pinterest to combine shaving cream with corn starch for some sensory play.  Daddy is out of town this weekend for a wedding, so I figured it was the perfect time to try to do something special with Sammy.  The blog that originally had the idea just had general instructions, so we kind of had to wing it.  I also thought that having some different colors to play with might be fun, so I threw some food coloring into the mix.

We started out with three bowls with some shaving cream in them.

Next I squirted in some gel food coloring.

I let Sammy do most of the mixing.  We had a red/pink one a blue one, and a yellow one.

On attempt 1, I dumped some corn starch into the first bowl and just let Sammy dive right in.  This was not a great idea.  It takes a while for everything to get mixed together and in the meantime, it's just a big mess.  I don't have any pictures of this because our hands were covered with pinkish goo.

On the last two bowls, I dumped the corn starch in and mixed it up myself with a spoon.  I don't have exact measurements, but I bet I used close to 3/4 of a cup of corn starch in each bowl.  Definitely don't be shy with the corn starch.  I tested it a couple of times to make sure it wasn't too sticky and had to keep adding more.  The yellow one ended up looking like scrambled eggs that someone had pulsed in a food processor.

The consistency was actually kind of silky, like flour or fine play sand, but if you squeezed it it would clump together.

Sammy decided to pretend to bake with it and spent a lot of time pouring it from one bowl to another and stirring it up.  According to her, we were making honey, and there were separate bowls for Mommy, Daddy, and Sammy.

I managed to make a pretty decent "snowball" at one point.

When it was mostly on the table instead of in the bowls, Sammy discovered she could draw in it.

We didn't have a ton left over after all the stuff that ended up on our clothes and the floor, but I stuck what was left in a baggie.  I'm sure it will keep for a little while.  It ended up being kind of a pale green color, but I guess that makes sense since we had mostly blue and yellow stuff.

Overall, this was a super-messy project, but it was pretty fun.  It kept Sammy entertained for about an hour (that's pretty rare for her), and clean up really wasn't all that bad.  If I had thought to throw a plastic mat down under her chair, it would have only taken about half the time.