Watercolor & Shaving Cream DIY Sensory Activity

We did this colorful DIY shaving cream craft during our Parents Night Out event at the YMCA. It can be done at any time for an awesome sensory play experience, with any color.

The benefits of using liquid watercolors makes traditional shaving cream sensory play exciting and fun and can even be an opportunity to learn about primary colors/combinations.

Liquid Watercolors add vibrant and playful colors to any medium and doesn’t stain tables or little hands like food coloring or paint. Another pro is Liquid Watercolors are completely washable and can be mixed with oil bases where food coloring cannot which is an advantage to adding fun colors to normal sensory crafts.

Materials Needed:

• Liquid Watercolor
• Shaving Cream

Note: We used an ocean scented shaving cream for sensitive skin

Age Group: 2+

Instructions:

1. Put a generous amount of shaving cream in front of the child

2. Drizzle the S&S Liquid Watercolors on top of the pile. The more you add the darker the hue, less can be used to make a pastel/lighter color.

3. MIX! Have the child mix it with their hands and start their sensory play!

It’s also fun to choose colors based on holidays and seasons!

About the Author:

My name is Savannah Syke, my whole life I have loved making creative and colorful projects and spending time with children. I have been running the Childcare Center (Kids Stuff) at the Emma B Howe Family YMCA for 4 years now. Our mission statement and principles at the Y are creating responsible, honest and creative kids, and these are the values I like to have my programs reflect and represent.

I run a program called Kids’ Stuff for ages 6 weeks old to 10 years. The projects I do with the kids for this program usually reflect the age group that anyone that can sit in a chair and make a mess can participate and learn from. For this age group, I like to have colorful and MESSY crafts (cause hey those are the fun ones). I also try to do crafts with little prep time, but maximum results. I choose to focus a lot on developing fine motor skills and independence because I think this is important for child development.