I’m always looking for ways to make playtime interactive, engaging, and, most importantly, developmentally beneficial. How could we possibly achieve all of those things at once? Let me introduce you to sensory play.

Sensory play is a game-changer in the world of combining fun and the development of essential skills. We’re talking about motor skills, problem-solving, emotional regulation, and brain and cognitive development it does it all! But what is sensory play?

A sensory play activity engages the senses of babies, toddlers, and children in creative and meaningful ways that traditional toys just can’t. The beauty of sensory activities is that you can use different materials to ensure your little ones are exposed to different textures and sensory stimuli, like shaving foam!

Today, I’m excited to share a simple shaving foam sensory play recipe and a few exciting ideas for creative fun. Let’s dive in! 

Transform Play Time: Shaving Foam Sensory Play Recipe

1. Add your ingredients: Add 1 cup of baby shampoo, ½ cup of water, 1 tablespoon of cornstarch (for added thickness), and food coloring (optional). 

2. Mix everything together: Use a whisk or an electric mixer to blend all of the ingredients until it’s fluffy and foam-like. 

3. Add food coloring: If you’re using a play recipe that calls for colored shaving foam, go ahead and add a few drops into your bowl and mix until it’s evenly blended. 

Shaving Foam Sensory Play Benefits

Development of Fine Motor Skills

Shaving foam helps develop fine motor skills by encouraging reaching, grasping, and scooping movements. Any activity that gets those little fingers and hands moving is key! This helps lay the foundation for things like writing and drawing, too. 

Encouraging Creativity

Think of shaving cream as a blank canvas for kids to explore and create; it’s an excellent base for fostering imagination and self-expression! They’re able to draw shapes and pictures, as well as practice writing letters and numbers. The options are endless and fun!  

Promotes Sensory Processing

The soft and fluffy texture is great for introducing kids to a rich sensory experience. This is especially beneficial when urging little ones to respond to different textures. Shaving foam can help them become more comfortable and open to different tactile sensations. 

Supports Language Development

As little ones explore new textures, they’ll be excited to share their feelings with you! Ask them questions about the sensations, actions, and emotions they’re experiencing. This helps broaden their vocabulary and maybe even introduce a few new words!  

Enhances Cognitive Skills

Problem-solving, exploration, and cause-and-effect are all things that shaving foam sensory play targets! For example, your little ones can explore how foam reacts to different mixtures or how it moves with their fingers, helping them develop reasoning and understanding. 

What Are The Best Shaving Foam Play Ideas?

Shaving Foam Versus Ice Cubes

This fun sensory activity is super easy to make and super easy to clean. That’s a win for both kids and parents, right?! All you’ll need for this activity is an ice cube tray, shaving foam, and a container or bin. 

Start by filling your tray with water, and add a few drops of food coloring to make rainbow-colored ice cubes. While waiting for those to freeze, fill a bin with shaving foam (the more, the better). Once your ice cubes are ready, add them to the bin and let your little ones swirl them around! 

Your little ones will be fascinated as the ice cubes melt, turning the foam into an array of exciting colors. This activity combines temperature and tactile exploration with a fun addition of color mixing!

Shaving Foam Masterpieces

This is one of the more chaotic play ideas, but what’s fun without a little messy sensory play from time to time? And while it is a bit messy, it only involves a few household ingredients!

To avoid any hard-to-clean messes (talking to you, food color stains!), start by laying down a piece of recycled cardboard under your play boundary. Next, lay down a large piece of parchment paper and use markers to draw various shapes and pictures. Create a simple mixture of shaving foam and food coloring, place the different colors in separate cups or bowls, and let your little ones use their imagination to fill in the blanks with their fingers (or popsicle sticks).  

This is a great way to let your little ones create unique artwork while enjoying a texturally engaging sensory experience. If you do decide to let your littles experiment with their fingers, check out this post on how to get food coloring off of hands!

Sensory Writing Tray

This activity is the same as the colored salt tray recipe; we’re just swapping out colored salt for colored shaving foam for a new tactile experience!

Add shaving foam into a tray, and drop in a few drops of food coloring the more you add, the deeper the color will be. Use a popsicle stick or spatula to create an even layer, and have your kids practice writing numbers or letters with their fingers. Ta-da! It’s as easy as that.

This shaving foam play activity is fantastic for practicing writing, spelling, or numbers. It stimulates the senses to make learning even easier than before. 

Shaving Foam Volcano

Okay, I try to stick to mess-free sensory play, but shaving foam is fun to get messy with! And this shaving foam volcano is the perfect example of that.  

For this activity, all you need is a small bowl, a baking dish to catch any overflow, a little baking soda, some vinegar, food coloring, and shaving foam. Start by combining your food coloring-dyed shaving foam with baking soda in a small container. Next, hand over a small cup of vinegar to your little one and ask them to pour it into the original mixture. Now, it’s time for the magic to happen! 

Your shaving foam and baking soda should turn into a colorful, erupting “volcano,” sure to keep your little ones mesmerized and entertained! This activity is great for developing cognitive skills as your kids watch a cause-and-effect situation in real-time.

Shaving Cream Sensory Bin

Sensory bins are highly beneficial for teaching kids about exploration, play, and creativity, which is why I try to make them as much as possible, using as many bases as possible! For this activity, we’re making a winter-wonderland-themed snowy sensory bin.

Grab your bin and place small plastic toys inside. Given the theme, I decided to stick with arctic animals and penguins. Now, fill the bin with shaving cream, adding enough to cover all of the toys. You can also add glitter for an exciting addition that your little ones will love! Now, hand over some tools to your kids so they can “save” all of those arctic animals! 

This activity is great for those fine motor skills we talked about earlier. It’s also great for imaginative sensory exploration! To create the perfect “tool kit” for your sensory bins, visit my Amazon shop! 

Sand Foam

Playdough is a favorite of mine for sensory play due to its developmental benefits, and sand foam offers similar advantages. We’re swapping the sand in traditional sand foam for cornstarch to make it more convenient, fluffier, stretchier, and easier to mold! 

To make this, use a measuring cup to combine equal parts shaving foam and cornstarch (about 1 cup of cornstarch and shaving cream per each “serving,” depending on how much you want to make). Knead the mixture until it becomes fluffy and dough-like, then add in your food coloring and mix until evenly distributed.

Just like with regular play dough, let your little ones squish, squeeze, and mold it however they’d like! It’s great for creative expression, fine motor skills, and cognitive development. For more play dough recipes, check out these posts on my blog!

Frozen Shaving Foam Fun

Did you know you could freeze shaving foam? Neither did I until I tried it! It created a super fun and engaging activity that entertained my kids for quite a while. 

Squeeze some shaving foam into ziplock bags, adding a few drops of different food coloring into each bag. Zip those up, then use your hands to squish and mix everything together. Once it’s all blended, cut the tip of the bag to turn it into a piping bag and create small dollops on a tray! After leaving those to freeze overnight, place them into a bowl and pour in a little warm water. 

Your kids will be entranced with how the colors mix and swirl as the foam melts. It’s a fun introduction to temperature contrast that doubles as a sensory experience!

Rain in a Jar

This sensory activity is a super fun way to teach your little ones about the weather. It allows them to visually see how rain “forms” in clouds and then drops down from the sky!

For this activity, fill a glass with water to the halfway mark. Next, add a layer of shaving foam on top of the water to demonstrate a cloud. Mix a few drops of blue food coloring in a separate bowl with a bit of water to represent the rain. Now, hand your little one a dropper so they can pick up some of the “rain” and drop it onto the cloud. 

This is an engaging way to help your kids understand changing weather conditions and an exciting hands-on opportunity to manipulate textures!

Shaving foam is the perfect base for creating texturally engaging sensory play recipes!

When finding kid-friendly bases to use for sensory play, nothing is off the table! From creative artwork to educational weather demonstrations, shaving foam is fantastic for creating texturally engaging activities that your kids will love.

While I included affiliate links for direct access to objects I used, feel free to get creative and incorporate objects of your own in addition to that!

For more sensory play ideas of all kinds, visit the Mothercould blog! And, for in-depth tutorials, some of my favorite play hacks, and tons of helpful play recipes, download the Mothercould in your Pocket resource!