This was an idea I had on my list for an entire summer before we finally got bored on a (literal) rainy day and tried it. Then I could not believe we had waited so long!

We mixed equal parts white glue and shaving cream and then added a little bit of tempera paint. (You could also use a few drops of food coloring - this is a super flexible “recipe.”) As usual, all of my littles love mixing things. This had a particularly satisfying consistency and they loved the process of mixing up these puffy paints! We made the whole darn rainbow because we have some seriously rainbow-obsessed kids and in the end, it didn’t create any more mess to make six colors than it would have to make two.

For reference, I calculate the worth of many projects based on a mess-to-time engaged ratio. Did it engage them for longer than it takes to clean it up? If so, worth it!

After we had our paints mixed up, all that was left to do was PAINT!

And…holy moly…did they ever paint. Every last one of them, from two years old to almost seven years old, painted…and painted…and painted! They did go through a lot of paper, but they spent over an hour making all kinds of beautiful pictures, some more abstract than others. They enjoyed experimenting with how thick to make the paint, and how the colors mixed, and how different brushes worked with this thick paint. The end results when they dried were also fun to touch and squish!

The best part was that they came back to it the next day and spent a super long time all over again! That was about the limit of the paint; it wouldn’t have lasted much longer (the air in the shaving cream starts to go flat and then it gets sticky and dry-ish). I did also store them in plastic bags overnight so they weren’t open to the air.

This is definitely on our repeat list!