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This blog is here for you to find fun learning activities to do with your children. We share great ideas we find and love on the Internet, as well as ideas we come up with on our own! We also like to share resources we find helpful.

To find ideas for your child, click on the age range blog label or on the theme/topic you are looking for (on the left side of the page). In each post, we try to list optimal age ranges for the activity, but you must judge for yourself if it is appropriate for your child. When you try an activity out, please comment and let us (and everyone else) know how your child liked it!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Shaving Cream Trays

Another great activity for toddlers, preschoolers, and school-aged children is Shaving Cream Trays. We used to do this activity in both Kindergarten and First Grade to practice letter, number, and shape formation. This is a great way to practice fine motor skills. For very young children, it's beneficial to simply practice making straight vertical lines, starting top to bottom. This is a great way to prepare them and strengthen muscles needed for letter formation.

Age Ranges: 1+ (I started around 2, but my daughter likes to put pretty much everything in her mouth)

Supplies Needed: Non-toxic shaving cream (pudding is a good substitution for very small children that might put the shaving cream in their mouth), table or cookie sheet.

Directions:

1. Put a big blob of shaving cream or pudding on the cookie sheet.

2. Show your child how to spread it out to make a drawing surface.

3. Let them draw! Show them how to "erase" and start again.

4. Shaving cream disappears the more they play in it, so eventually it will be gone. It only requires a quick wipe-down of the surface afterwards.

Extensions:

*For older children, call out letters or numbers to write.

*You can do this with your children. On your own cookie sheet, write a letter or number and have them guess.

*This also works for math problems!

This is my daughter at 25 months working on this activity.

4 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Shaving cream also cleans off crayon and marker marks on plastic tables (not wood). We had plastic tables at the preschool I worked at and once a week we would have a similar shaving cream activity (right on top of the craft table) and by the end the table was completely clean of all markings.

Amanda said...

What a great tip Elizabeth!

I did this activity today while nannying and it was loads of fun. It seems really messy at first but totally wipes off cleanly so it's really a no fuss activity. I plan to try this with Tobias tomorrow and see how he likes it.

Valerie Plowman said...

We did this today for our letter activity. It was lots of fun! Kaitlyn especially liked it.

Katy said...

I actually remember doing this in 5th grade! We put shaving cream on our desks and would practice spelling words. Now it sounds a little young for 5th grade, but it was fun!

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