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Who doesn’t love speech and language activities that are fun, interactive, inexpensive, and easy to set up?
I know I do! My students love this mess-free, stress-free shaving cream activity. The only materials you need are sealed gallon bags, shaving cream, and written materials (e.g., flash cards, worksheets, reading passages, construction paper with words written on it, etc.).
Basic Directions:
- Squirt a little shaving cream into a gallon bag (I’d suggest you fill it about ¼-⅓ full).
- You may need to add more shaving cream as the activity goes on, as a bit tends to dissolve.
- I usually use one bag per student so they each get their own.
- Carefully let out any extra air trapped inside the bag and then seal it.
- Place the bag on top of your written material. As you can see in the picture above, you can quickly jot down a few words on some paper and you’ll be ready to go.
- Have your students reveal what is hidden below the shaving cream by pressing their fingers down and spreading the shaving cream out. They will likely see part of a word, in which they should continue pressing the shaving cream out of the way to reveal the whole word. (See pictures below)
There are so many ways that you can use this activity. My older students like sliding their finger along written passages as they read each line. I’ve made up fun games with my students using various materials. For example, I write each word that the student finds as he/she practices it. I keep a running list throughout the activity and the student has to keep searching for new words. They have to practice a word double the amount of normal times if they find a word they already practiced.
The key to this activity is that it is MESS-FREE! I used shaving cream on my therapy table one day and had the students trace different patterns or letters as they practiced their sound. This was a total disaster! There was shaving cream everywhere, it was hard to get it off of the students’ hands, it wasn’t easy to clean from the table, the students smelled like shaving cream all day, and the smell in my tiny room was overpowering. Putting the shaving cream in a bag is a total game changer. It also allows you to reuse endless materials with the shaving cream.
CLICK HERE for FREE printable materials to use with this activity! The FREEBIE includes print and go materials for articulation, categorization, rhyming, and synonyms.