Playing with Shaving Cream on the Windows

Ohhh the boys had so much fun with this messy sensory activity! I sprayed some globs of shaving cream on the windows to let the kids smear all over. Later when they appeared to tire of the activity, I dripped some washable blue paint on the windows and gave them a few paint brushes as well which worked like a charm to reignite their interest!

One of the best parts about this activity, was that it was really easy to clean up! A wet rag was all it took!

We did it again during our Color of the Week Series. The color of the week was orange!

For tons more ways have fun with shaving cream, 
click the photo below!

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Dinosaur Fossil Dig Sensory Bin

I created this fun Dinosaur Fossil Dig Sensory Bin after a trip to Mid America Science Museum in Hot Springs, AR. They had a few dinosaur fossils and a huge fossil dig which L (4 1/2) absolutely loved!  

So I wanted to re create a mini version of the dig for L. I used coffee grounds for the "dirt," and 

 I bought a package of Plastic Dinosaur Skulls from Safari Ltd Toob which came with a neat fossil identifier card. I gave him an "archeological tool" (paintbrush) to uncover his fossils, which he then matched to the card. I then read him the facts on the card about his found fossil and we took it a bit further and looked up each dinosaur on Google to see more pictures and facts. This sensory bin was actually the biggest hit so far out of ALL of our sensory bins we've ever done. He loved playing Paleontologist! We did this over and over again for days... hiding the skulls, digging them up and brushing them off, identifying what they were and looking up more facts and cool pictures of each one on the internet.

Another way to play

This could easily be done with toy dinosaurs as well!  

You could print off a few pictures of real dinosaurs matching the kinds of dinosaur figures you have, then find some simple facts about each one to write on the pictures of each dinosaur sheet and use these as identifier and fact cards. I think we may do this as well to prolong the fun of this activity!

Without the fossils, it was a fun and simple sensory material for both boys.
My youngest (18mo) LOVED the coffee grounds!

Our bunny "Bear" was quite curious about our fossil dig as well! 

Here are some more fun dinosaur activities!

Dinosaur Themed Playdate

Simple Dino Land Small World Sensory Bin

and to see ALL of our fun Sensory Bins, 
click the photo below!

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Edible Popcorn Painting

A long time ago I saw an idea for painting popcorn on Living Locurto. They used a milk and food coloring paint, which is technically an edible paint, but I wanted to paint popcorn with something that would leave the POPCORN edible. Not JUST edible though, DELICIOUS!  

So we used 

ROYAL ICING 

to paint our popcorn

I've always used powdered egg whites to make our royal icing. 

This is the basic recipe for Royal Icing

3 tablespoons of egg white powder (also called Meringue Powder)

-4 cups powdered sugar

-6 tablespoons of water. 

-A few drops of food coloring.

I can't remember the exact amount, but I thinned it up a bit with extra water. Just enough so that it wasn't so thick that he couldn't paint with it.

**Though I haven't tried this, if you may be worried about the egg whites in the recipe, as an alternative I'm pretty sure you could try melting regular store bought icing to use. It may harden faster, but i'm sure you could have some fun with it before it did! ** 

He painted the popcorn a few different ways...

with a paintbrush and I also gave him a dropper to drizzle on the "paint"

When he was done with his little pile, it looked like this. Beautiful! It also smelled delicious! 

We took a few bites as it was, but it still needed to "dry" 

After he was done painting, I made another batch of popcorn. 

We did ours on the stove, the "old fashioned" way.It's so fun to watch it pop like this!

and then I used what was left of our Royal Icing Paint to drizzle on the rest of the popcorn.

We let it dry for a few hours before digging in. The popcorn didn't stay AS crunchy as I had hoped, but it was still yummy and the kids did NOT care how crunchy it was. They cobbled this down!

 It was a bit addicting I must say..and so pretty too! 

The colors made me think of Easter, so we may try this again in April, but there are all sorts of fun colors you could try this with and adapt it for lots of holidays!

Here are some other fun things we've done with popcorn...

Popcorn Kernel Sensory Bin

Huge Popcorn Fight!

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Scented Bubble Mountains

We made huge strawberry scented bubble mountains by simply mixing water, dishsoap, and kool-aid in a bowl and using a straw to blow the bubbles. 

Just make sure your child is reminded to not suck in!  We did this activity at age 2 with no problems. We did indoor bubble blowing again when L was 3 and he fully understood the difference between sucking in and blowing out, but we still had an accident and he sucked up a lot of soapy water..and threw up. It was awful, but accidents happen and we tried it again now a year with no problems and had a lot of fun! 

We played a fun competitive game of "who can make the biggest bubble mountain." He originally wanted the BIG bowl for this game but, when he figured out that mommy's smaller shallow bowl made it easier to make the biggest bubble mountain, he wanted to switch bowls lol. 

The sunlight was coming in behind us and the bubbles sparkled beautifully!

If you liked this activity, you may also enjoy...

Bubble Printing with Rainbow Bubbles

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