Creative Playhouse: Trucks and Shaving Foam

This is a great activity for little boys, but obviously girls love this sort of thing too!! We play with shaving foam in the bath a lot; its a lovely sensory material thats pretty irresistible to touch when its all puffed out like this:

don't you just want to stick your hands in?

This is the first time we've played with it outside the bathroom; I put loads on a tray and gave Jake some trucks and let him play. And play he did. He asked for a spoon so he could shovel the foam into the trucks and 'paint' the floor...

Then he drove the trucks through the "mud" and rolled them on the mat to make "snow tracks" - he has so much imagination at the moment - and open ended sensory play is just perfect for nurturing that.

This play activity was so simple and produced so much fun. Combining basic toys with sensory materials that you have at home is an easy and effective way of setting up playtime, and making old toys fun again! The truck cost about £1.50 and the shaving foam was less than £1. There are loads of things you probably have at home that you can use in sensory play. Check out the ABCs of Sensory Play for all you need to know about setting up sensory play. Part 3 has a huge list of basic sensory materials, you can read it here; just scroll to 'M'.

There are lots of things you can do with shaving foam; we'll be exploring more of these soon, but imagine mixing with soil or colouring it brown for some messy muddy fun? or turning it green for toxic slime?