One of the activities I put on our advent list this year was an idea that came from Family Fun magazine: create a snowscape with shaving cream. My kids had no idea what that meant when they pulled the little card out of the box but they were pretty excited once they figured it out.
I put out a cookie sheet for each kid, gave them each a selection of Imaginext
The idea with the toys was that they could make the guys ice skate, or sled or just generally play in the snow.
I’d even taken extra care to pull a Bat-snowmobile out of the toy box…
And penguins! But neither of the kids ended up using the shaving cream as snow.
It was interesting to watch them because I could tell they knew this was supposed to be fun, but they were also kind of baffled about what they should do.
And at first, they did not like getting the shaving cream on their hands. Wyatt probably got up to wash his hands three times in the first five minutes. Augie just wiped them on his tummy which he didn’t mind for some reason. I guess one’s feelings about shaving cream touching them aren’t always logical.
I gave them some rubber spatulas to play with and that’s what got the ball rolling. They swiped and wiped and squooshed the cream up into big mountains. They buried their toys and dug them out again.
And pretty soon they overcame their distaste for having shaving cream on their hands!
They were busy with this for about an hour or so but I’m not going to lie — clean-up was a total pain. Shaving cream sticks to everything and doesn’t easily rinse out of the tiny nooks and crannies on little toys. And despite the cookie sheets, quite a bit of the cream made it onto the table. There was a sizeable amount on tummies and jeans too. I let Augie wash the toys for a bit which he just thought of as a new variation on the game and Wyatt only complained a little about wiping the table off four times. So despite the hefty clean-up time we all thought this was a big, fun success!
Does your family play with shaving cream? Any tips to minimize the mess?
