Shaving Cream Drawings -All Grades

Shaving Cream Drawings are a fun, creative way to teach students that:
• common everyday items can inspire art
• artists use many different types of tools to create art; in this case, hands and fingers
• using thin and thick lines is one way to clearly express your ideas
Depending on the grade I am working with, I will include one or all of the above concepts.


Did I mention that it was fun?! At first when I started squirting shaving cream on the table in front of students they couldn't seem to believe their eyes, and then slowly, let the drawings begin!

To start this lesson the class and I watched one of the several sand paintings at: http://www.sandfantasy.com
--Make sure you review the videos before showing one; I noticed a stray body part pops up on a couple of the videos.

This particular video seemed just the right length to me, and has great visuals, so it's the one I showed the class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3GF6s2TmwI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
(Go explore the site; there are a lot of great choices.)


There are a lot of “oooh’s” and “aahhh’s” from students watching the video, and they try to guess what might be coming next. After the video students share their comments and I point out all the parts of her hand the woman drew with.

As we continue to discuss I start squirting shaving cream at each student’s spot and they start working up a foam and drawing on the tabletop.

It is a delight throughout the room. I haven’t run into a tactile defensive student doing this project yet, but keep my plastic gloves within reach just in case.

As students work the foam, it slowly starts to disappear and they reluctantly pick up the sponge from a bucket I have placed on each table. Often I’ll stop and model what squeezing out a sponge and rinsing the table looks like, (yes, even on the last day of school! -oh those "teachable moments!") and we end up with freshly cleaned tabletops and lots of stories about what they drew.

This is the final lesson I did on the last day of school, but I’ll pick one grade per year and stagger the times during the year each class does it.

The Magic of "Mr. Clean Eraser Magic"

The last month of school I did a slow and steady clean up and reorganizing in my art room.
Unlike my house, (I've been told I am one box away from being a hoarder... arg!) my classroom(s) need to be put away clean and orderly so I don't waist time in the fall trying to get ready for the new school year. (Again this summer there will be a lot of construction within the school so I probably will not be able to get in to set up my room until about a week before school starts. Having two schools to set up, time gets tight.) On the cleaning end of things, I am just loving the "Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, Extra Power." I brought some into school in the spring and found they work fantastic getting permanent marker off the table tops. (-All those tiny dots that soaked through the newspaper we had down on the table...)
The spray the custodian gives me smells nasty so I've been on the hunt for a good solution. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Pads! (The Extra Power ended up the winner for me.)
Just get one wet -no soap- and give a small amount of pressure and poof! black eraser marks are off the tabletops!
So as I did my slow clean, I dumped out all my colored pencils, crayons and Crayola markers and cleaned all the trays they were in. It worked so much faster and with less effort than taking a scrubbie and a gritty cleanser to them. I gave a good once-over to the student chairs and countertops too.
Since spring I've kept a Magic Eraser under the sink for quick clean ups, and plan on continuing this in the fall.
Here is my "Before and After"...