Shaving Cream Foam Sand

Have you ever played with kinetic sand? That stuff has the coolest texture ever! It’s kind of pricey though, and in our family, it would all end up on the floor after the first time we played with it. So it just doesn’t feel like it’s worth buying until my kids are a bit older. But do-it-yourself kinetic sand? Why not! We decided to make it ourselves!

There are so many kinetic sand recipes out there that it’s a little overwhelming to know which ones are worth trying! I wanted to find a recipe that would end up with a similar texture to the store bought stuff, for a fraction of the cost. We picked three very different recipes, and made them all to see how they’d turn out. This shaving cream foam sand was the first one we tried, and while it definitely wasn’t my favourite, it really is an interesting little experiment to try. I’ll be posting the other recipes next week, so be sure to check back!

We tried three recipes for play sand which you can check out and compare here:

1. Shaving Cream Sand Foam using Shaving Cream and Sand – Make this one if you want a cool sensory foamy experience, but not necessarily the most squishiest, moldable sand.

2. Moldable Play Sand using Flour and Oil – Make this one if you want soft, moldable sand that you can play with over and over again without needing to add more liquid.

3. Kinetic Sand using Corn Starch and Dishsoap – Make this one if you want play sand with a texture closest to the kinetic sand in stores, but you don’t mind adding water after it dries out.

Shaving cream has turned out to be a very versatile little material! We’ve added it to glue to make puffy paint. We’ve added it to corn starch to make shaving cream play dough. We’ve used it in a weather experiment to make rain clouds. And STILL we haven’t finished up the four little bottles I bought from the dollar store! It’s pretty neat how it instantly adds a silky smooth and foamy texture to whatever you add it to.

I picked up a big bag of play sand at Home Depot for around $5. The bag was about 50lbs so it’s way more than we needed, even for all three of the recipes, but that’s okay. I’m sure we’ll put it to good use!

The method for this foam dough is similar to what we did when we made shaving cream play dough, except we used sand instead of corn starch.

My girls loved spraying the shaving cream into the sand, or at least they loved the idea of spraying it. They weren’t strong enough to press out more than a couple of small squirts of shaving cream, but they still thought it was the coolest thing ever and they were both really excited to get their turns trying!

We used an entire bottle of shaving cream, and then added a little more after we mixed it all together. Adding more shaving cream made the foaminess come back.

This is the first time we’ve made foam dough, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this is pretty much the only time that it’s “foamy” so to speak. Maybe it’s different with different brands of shaving cream? But for us, using Barbasol shaving cream from the dollar store, the foaminess lasted about 5 minutes before it all blended together and we had to add some more.

It was definitely a neat little sensory experiment, but a little more short lived than I was hoping. So if you do try it, enjoy this foaminess while it lasts, and try not to be disappointed when it turns into regular wet sand.

Once we started mixing together all of the sand into the shaving cream, all of the foaminess was absorbed. It pretty much looked like we had just added water to the sand. You can add more shaving cream to bring back the foamy texture if you want, or you can continue on and just play with it as it is.

It was lots of fun to squish through your fingers!

In my opinion, this is not the best kinetic sand recipe out there. The other recipes we tried turned out much better, so I’ll be posting those soon! This one was still lots of fun though, and it had a great texture when it was still foamy.

And it made some great play sand when it was finished. It was very moldable and we were able to build little sand castles with it. I wouldn’t say the texture was anything at all like the kinetic sand you can buy, but still fun nonetheless.

Be prepared for a little bit of a mess when you make this! And remember not to wash your hands in the kitchen sink when you are done – you don’t want your pipes all clogged up with sand! We went into the backyard and used the garden hose to clean ourselves up.

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Shaving Cream Foam Sand

This shaving cream foam sand only takes two ingredients!

Materials

• 3 cups of play sand
• 1 can of shaving cream about 250g

Instructions

• Add the bottle of shaving cream to the play sand and mix together.
• When the foaminess goes away, use it as regular play sand to mold into different shapes and sand castles, or add more shaving cream to bring back the foaminess.

This shaving cream foam sand only takes two ingredients, and you end up with a really interesting sensory experiment! Once the foaminess disappears, you can use it as regular kinetic sand, and mold it into different shapes, or you can add more shaving cream to bring back the foamy texture.

This is a fun little experiment to try if you have the ingredients on hand. Be sure to check back next week for the other recipes we tried!

Source : onelittleproject.com
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