R was at his nana's house for most of the day and when he came home he was a big ball of defiant energy. He was just wound up. I had wanted to do some kind of activity with him, and I was thinking that tonight would be the night we finally decorated our gingerbread house. When I seen his mood, I decided on this shaving cream snowscape instead. It was a fantastic choice.
I started off by asking, "What would you like to play with in the snow? What things like to play in the snow? What sort of things would you see if you were out playing in the snow?" Then R and his daddy went to his playroom and picked out a few things. While they were in the next room, I made a snowscape using shaving cream in a shallow bin. R had no idea what I was planning.
When he came back, I think he was intrigued but a little hesitant and not fully excited. He is typically not a kid that likes mess. There are circumstances in which he enjoys getting dirty or messy, but there aren't that many. He still loved this. After touching the shaving cream and getting the feel for it, we started adding in his toys. He picked out some trees, dinosaurs, lizards, bugs, a cat, and some robot bad guys. He also picked out a plastic Zhuzhu pet toy on a surfboard that we had got from Burger King. He pretended it was a snowboard. He had a blast.
Soon after this picture I realized that the bin on top of the table wasn't the right height for him. So he sat on top of the table and played the rest of the time. Its a big dining room table with plenty of room, and I was constantly there with him, so I wasn't worried. It worked out a lot nicer. We listened to Christmas music and played in the snow. Squeels of delight were heard often.
The last picture was obviously taken in messy splendor. He was saying "messy is fuuunnnn!" I'm really glad he enjoyed it so much. I'm also really glad that he channeled all of his energy into this project. I wasn't chasing him around and reminding him that he needed to behave. In spite of his appearance, he really didn't make a big mess outside of the bin. Sometimes, when R laughs really hard, he puts his hands to his face. There were several times that he was laughing and did this without thinking. Then he'd realized what he'd done and laugh harder.
I loved this activity. When it was time to get cleaned up, his daddy wiped the majority of the mess off of him. While he was doing that, I sprayed the shaving cream off of the bin and his toys in the bathtub. Then I ran a bubble bath for him and we played some more. The mess wasn't so bad that I wouldn't want to do this again. In fact, I'm sure we'll do this again next year. Maybe even again this winter season. It was such a big hit.
Do you have any creative uses for shaving cream?
HA! This looks like fun! You have to love his face! Pure bliss.
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