One of the things I love about homeschooling is the way you can be multi-modal and explore areas like science or maths through art. Kids love to learn by being creative and hands on!

This is a fun and easy messy play activity that is cheap to do and makes beautiful decorative paper that you can use for upcycling crafts, making cards or christmas crackers, or to theme in with other activities. This green and yellow design was done to explore Spring and daffodils.

Materials

• Plain paper (A4 printer paper works great)
• Shaving foam (cheap is great!)
• Food colouring / dye (2-3 colours)
• Large plastic or tinfoil tray
• Mixing stick (i.e. an iceblock stick or plastic knife)
• Scraper (i.e. shower squeegee, plastic knife, iceblock stick, hands)

Directions

1. Spray shaving foam (about an inch deep) to cover a tray at least A4 in size.
2. Generously drip food colouring onto the foam.
   • Discuss first what colours you will use; it’s a good idea to start with 2-3 colours and build up from there (to avoid eager mixing creating a muddly brown!)
   • Ask younger children to predict what might happen when certain colours are mixed together; i.e. red and yellow (orange); blue and red (purple).
3. Press the paper firmly onto the foam making sure that all parts of the paper make contact.
4. Scrape as much foam off the paper as you can.
5. Leave the paper to dry.

Voila! You have beautiful marbled paper!

Tips

This is an all year round activity, however, you will want to adjust your clean up methods to the season! In summer, consider doing this outside in the warm sun on the grass – hose down your kids afterwards and peg paper to dry on the washing line. In winter, consider doing this in the garage or kitchen on top of a tarpaulin – have paper towels (or a hot shower) ready for clean up and lie paper on a clothes drying rack.

Sensory kids may have different parts of this activity that they like to participate in or watch. It’s a great idea to have some washable toys on hand that can use to play in the shaving foam once you’ve finished with the paper – this may be your kids favourite part! If it’s summer, consider letting them use the left over shaving foam to create a slip’n’slide on the trampoline or a messy ‘snowball’ fight.