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.