Make some gloriously goopy soap fluff for sensory play time fun! Made with 2 basic materials it feels so squishy and soft and smells wonderfully clean and fresh when it’s time to clear it away!
We are HUGE fans of messy, sensory play and have enjoyed dozens of fun activities over the past few years from frozen sparkly jelly to homemade fingerpaints, cloud dough to rainbow spaghetti slime! You can check out our full sensory play collection here and pin some ideas for later!
Every time I open the cupboard under my kitchen sink my eye catches the cans of shaving cream/ foam that I keep storing for messy play on hot days! We love shaving cream play, marbling and printing activities too and it’s such a clean and cheap sensory material to use. The other day I also spied an old bag of cotton wool padding and thought we could have some fun experimenting with combining the two. It must feel just like wonderfully squishy clouds!
The girls were set the task of teasing apart a bag of cotton wool pads, which turned out to be a great gross motor skill activity, pulling them into little pieces and filling up the base of our sensory table. Then I squirted in a can of shaving cream/ foam to cover all of the base. Over the top of this they were delighted to sprinkle large confetti glitter from a big shaker jar.
It looked quite gorgeous as it sparkled in the sunshine! If only it was some sort of whipped dessert, but alas! Next step was the best of all: mix it up and have fun! 
It was totally irresistible and I had to get my hands in there too. The mixture felt so warm and soft when combined with the cotton fluff, and reminded me of the clean soap activity that we made in the past. Yet this is much easier and faster to throw together!
They spent a good while just running their hands through it and enjoying the way that it felt. Cakie loved it so much that she decided to “hug it and cuddle it”, leaning right into the table and lying in it! 
Then they whipped up pretend play cakes and ice creams with cream and sprinkles on the top, serving them to me from their outdoor cafe! 
The cotton wool padding helped to give the shaving cream some form that could be loosely shaped and held, as they made balls to throw and splat into the table. By the end they had both got right into it, squishing it between their toes and covering themselves as though under a warm and cosy duvet. We had the paddling pool set up nearby so that they could run and jump straight in when they wanted to wash it all off and it came off so easily as the foam immediately dissolved under the water. We then were able to pull out the cotton wool with a sieve, squeeze it out and throw it away (which was another fun activity in itself!)
What they are learning as they play:
sensory: exploring textures with their whole body, responding to how materials smell and feel
phse: trying new experiences, knowing how they feel about doing something different, being confident, co-operation
literacy: descriptive language development, imaginative play and storytelling
creativity: inventing play scenarios using one material to represent another
NB we did this while Baby was napping as she is a prolific taster of all things at the moment!
Cakie: 4.9
Pop: 3.2
Bean: 15 mos
Search the sensory play and messy play archives here for hundreds of activities to try or pin!
Oh wow!! Looks like so much fun. Can I ask where your sensory table comes from? Suppose you could do it in a tray but to have a bigger table looks even better! Thank you.
We use a wading pool for a sensory “table”. 🙂 Sometimes I set a plastic “dish” tub inside to contain the material (such as water because if you aren’t outside, it’s hard to discard of the water from a pool) and other times I put the material right into the pool itself. If it’s a “clean” material I let the kids get right into the pool.
Wow! I want to dig my hands in too! This looks so fun 🙂
How messy is this? Would you do this only outside? My son is 2 and I was thinking about filling his water table with shaving cream and maybe even a little water — since it will float.
Wow! This looks sooooo wonderful! It really does look totally delicious! We were playing with shaving cream today too! Wish I’d known about the cotton pads. Great thinking there. It would be nice to add some “form” to the foam. You’ve given me something to think about for next time!
I did this yesterday with my daughter (nearly 5) we used our old baby bath put into the regular bath. Didn’t matter that we splashed it every where. Was a massive hit we both loved it. My daughter couldn’t wait to tell her dad that we made a sparkly cloud. Could fish out the fluff at the end and shoer away the test. Thanks for the idea.
looks like fun wish we could use shaving cream still
WHat a neat idea, thanks for sharing
Owwa! What a great activity! I think I will play it all day long by myself 🙂 And it will bring more fun when shared with kids, and I don’t care that everything will be dirty – it is even more funny that way 🙂 Thank you very much!!!
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