After we played with the “snowy day” small world play the other day, I took out the toys and we did some marbling using the remaining foam in the tray. Thanks very much to my friend Clare for telling me about this lovely craft activity! Just perfect for this age group in so many ways and easy peasy too, which always helps!
All you have to do is drip a few drops of food colouring into the tray of shaving foam and then mix it all up. We used pink, blue and green and the resulting colours were very pretty pastels. Depending on what effect you were trying to create you could go for brights, “boyish” colours or just stick to one colour at a time.
It looked so delicious when mixed up- like toothpaste or sweeties. Mmmmm!
Simply lay a piece of white paper on top of the swirly patterns and push down gently. Then lift it off. This was all easy enough for Cakie to do by herself.
Then I used another piece of paper, folded over, to scrape off the excess foam from the dipped paper. It feels like this will remove all of the pattern, but it actually seems to intensify it instead and obviously helps the picture to dry more quickly..
And the results were pretty spectacular considering the resources used! We did this over and over until we had used up all of our paper. (We used drawing paper for this as it is thicker and heavier, therefore absorbing more colour than ordinary writing paper would do.)
The papers were left to dry overnight and then I laminated them and cut out zillions of heart shapes to make some decorations with.
I punched a hole in the top of each one and threaded through some thick ribbon, and they hung on it without needing glue etc.
And a few more I hung on individual little bits of ribbon and added a few buttons. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them but they look cute 🙂
Maybe I will hang a couple of these in the girls’ rooms.
And by turning the hanging hearts on their side they became a little string of heart bunting, which I like even better.
These are hanging up as our Valentine’s decorations.
The paper would be lovely used for cards, wrapping paper, card toppers or simply framed.
I think it would also be beautiful for making Easter egg pictures from. We shall be doing it again soon!
LOVE the garland and little heart decorations you made. What a fun activity. My daughter will love this.
Stopping by from Child Central Station. Just checking out some of the other award winners, congrats.
I love your blog… passed along a blogging award to you: http://childcentralstation.blogspot.com/2011/01/blog-awards.html
(Looks like Abbie beat me here! It takes awhile to get to everyone’s blog to let them know they have been awarded!)
What a neat idea! We are going to do an ‘L’ unit this coming week. This will fit perfectly for Love!
great sensory activity! I think we’ll have to try this in my classroom! oh- the kids will love it!
This is a great idea. Thanks for sharing!
LOVE LOVE this! It looks sooo cool! (and im so glad you said it looked delicious because i thought the same thing haha!). It made such pretty pictures! Bookmarking 🙂
I have been meaning to post about a similar thing we did to make poetry gifts for our free Christmas exchange this past year. Such fun!
We REALLY MUST DO THIS! It looks such fun and the effect is so pretty! I love the heart garland you made out it!!! Perfect way to involve wee ones!
Thank you for linking up to Kids Get Crafty!!
Maggy
I’ve never tried this before with food colouring – thanks for the idea and for sharing it with us at the Play Academy. I love your new look blog too.
We’ve done this craft too and we use a squeegee to scrape the shaving cream from our paper. The kids love that part.
We’ve just tried this-waiting to see the finished result. Where did you get the overall? We’ve just created loads of mess especially the just two year old!
How amazing. We play with shaving foam at nursery a lot, I’d never thought of putting colouring it it. What a fab idea – the hearts look beautiful x
Maureen- the squeegee sounds like a fab idea and I’m sure it adds to the fun too!
Sarah- Leah made it for C for her second birthday and it’s absolutely beautiful. Maybe contact her to see if she can make one? It is waterproof at the front and very spacious. I think she should set up a little Etsy shop selling them!
Thanks Anna-having muttered about mess, the results were good. We used your idea for thank you cards using black card then cut up the marbled paper to go inside.
wow,what a great idea!I am sure my daughter will love this.thanks.
What beautiful hearts. Great idea, thank you.
Hi Anna, We’ve just done this – brilliant! I was trying to do it from memory and we got in a right old mess so am just checking in again to see how to do it properly! Thank you!
Hello – I am Hooked! I stumbled upon your blog via Red Ted Art’s blog (via another blog that escapes me). LOVE all the play ideas, love love love them! Can’t wait to play with the boys with these ideas!
I hope you don’t mind but I’ve added a link to this post:
http://crochetaddictcfs.blogspot.com/p/crafts-to-make-with-child.html
If there any problems just let me know but i wanted to spread the word about your site.
I’m a director of a day care center. I have used shaving cream in the past, but on the label it says not for children. So how do we allow it around the 2 year olds? I have not allowed it in the center, because of the warning. I would like any feedback please. Would love to bring back into the classrooms.