Fabulous Shaving Cream!

I was recently reminded, when scrolling through this blog, of a Bev Bos recipe for shaving cream art.  Instead of just using shaving cream and color, which does adhere to paper very well, you mix shaving cream with equal parts "Elmer's Glue."  (We used a generic version which worked equally as well).

In instances like these I usually just start out getting the supplies set up to work with as though I am going to make the shaving cream- paint myself and with in minutes I have the entire class gathered around begging to help; so... I let them ;-).

I let them empty the shaving cream container and whip it up, I had to pour the glue because the container is quite heavy.  They decided that they wanted to have blue and purple paint so I split it into two containers added blue to one and asked them what colors to add in order to make purple.  One child answered blue and red, another red and yellow.  We talked about it and took a vote to see which way we should make purple- we ended up with orange paint, so you can tell who "won."  I make a habit of using only primary colors fairly often so that they can discover how to make secondary colors on their own.  

The end product is a little firmer, a little more slimy, and a little more sticky. It is in every respect as GREAT as shaving cream though.  

Both of these bowls were completely full and I used only one can of shaving cream.  The result was enough for 14 papers with as much shaving cream as each child wanted.  

After they washed their hands they came to the other table where their papers were waiting for them with bottles of glitter and two baskets of odds and ends we use for collages.  As many of you know, there is no such thing as too much glitter.  

One of the most amazing things about this shaving cream is the amount of material it can hold on the paper.  All of these things went up on the wall as they are and lost little, if any glitter or collage materials from them.  It almost works better than glue it self.  The other amazing thing about this is how it feels when it dries.  I can't even quite describe it, so you will have to try it at home for yourself.  

Something that I often do in my classroom with art type things is to do the same thing the next day with a slight variation.  I do this for a few reasons.  First, children learn, experience, and experiment in repetition.  The other reason is that often even if they get to do the project two or three times the first day they would still have done more if they didn't have to leave or go to lunch.  They almost always are really happy to do it again the next day.  

The second day of this project we started out by making our own "sparkles," (their word for glitter, colored sand, or any similar substance), in preparation for the shaving cream art.  I poured them each a small plate of kosher salt, (I don't think it is important for it to be kosher, it was just what we had), and they went straight to work coloring it with chalk.  Each child made at least two plates, which were set aside for them to use later.  

 

While most of the children sprinkled the salt on like glitter, two of them mixed the salt into the shaving cream mixture.  When they mixed it in they were able to pick up the shaving cream off the paper in a ball of what looked and felt like crystallized dough.  They then squeezed it and water came out of the ball, and the ball compressed.  They had no artwork to show for it except the ball- which remained the same after "drying," but it was a really cool experience for them.  

Below you can see some of the artwork from the second time we worked with the shaving cream- paint. This time they chose pink and purple and remembered how to make purple from the trial and error session the day before! 

Indoor Winter Wonderland

In New York it is often too cold to go outside (legally) in the winter time.  In order to go outside, the center policy is that it has to be warmer than 25 degrees including the wind chill factor, and even then there are various time constraints based on how cold it is.  This problem often leads to cabin fever that no amount of super- fun gross motor activities can seem to cure.  The magic balm rather is bringing the outside in.  In the winter I bring tubs full of snow inside from the outside. We do many things with the snow.  Sometimes I have them put gloves on and they play in the snow however they see fit; this often results in several  miniature snow men on various surfaces waiting to melt.  We also stir it, put trucks in it, melt it with salt, pour warm water in it, dig in it, and anything else you can think of.  My favorite activity with the tubs of snow however, (and theirs too), is variations on snow paint.  


Here are some pictures from a few weeks ago:

I had several small squirt bottles out filled with their choice of water and liquid water color.  We ran out of liquid water colors on this particular occasion so I just started using food coloring and water.  They work about the same, the only downside to food coloring is that the color is more watered down and there for not as vibrant and doesn't take as easily to the snow.  It still works fine, though.

I also gave them Dixie cups filled with water and liquid water color, pipettes, and eye droppers.  They were fascinated with the holes that they could make in the snow by dropping the contents of their pipettes in the same spot over and over again.  I also gave them spoons and forks that they used to dig or rake the snow.  When they first started, once they had covered the surface of the snow with color, they would dig down and bring up white snow to put on top and start all over again.  

We did this several times over- we used about 6 bins of snow this paticular day and we would have used more if we didn't have to go to lunch.  

As you can see we ended up with quite a variety of colors.

This is one of my favorite shots; It is "a mountain" that they made unintentionally and one little girl sprayed and sprayed this mountain.  The holes in the top are from the water stream from the spray bottles; She held the spray bottle not even a centimeter away from it while spraying.  The mountain was made when they were digging "valleys" for the "rivers;"  At this point the snow had melted down enough and enough of the color had gathered at the bottom beneath the snow that, if they dug deep, they created rivers of liquid water color.  


On this day I let them play in it again after lunch and nap time, when it resembled glaciers in blackish water.  This was an interesting discovery for them.  They were surprised that the water from the melted snow was cold for some reason.  




Variations:
On other occasions they have put glitter in the snow, buried buttons and dug them out again, put chalk in it that they smashed up using mortars and pestles but  ultimately they always come back to just wanting to do spray bottles and pipettes with colored water.   In a very slight variation of this I put ordinary colored water and pipettes and spray bottles at one table and the same things at another except I had them dissolve salt in the water.  They did ask for spoons and forks or shovels but I told them that I didn't have any that day so they would pay attention to what was happening. They went back from table to table and eventually found out that the salt water melted the snow much more efficiently than than the plain water.  Once this discovery was made it was every child at the "salt" table; They worked together spraying and dropping until the entirety of the snow melted into salty indigo liquid.  I put out the salt bottles another day, but they weren't as interested in melting; the discovery had already been made.