Have you been looking for a way to add more sensory play into your learning routine? Puff Paint is one of my favorite ways incorporate sensory play into both my classroom and at home learning.
What is Puff Paint?
Puff paint is a mixture of liquid school glue, shaving cream, and food coloring or paint. When mixed together they create a puffy substance that can be used to paint or coat paper and other objects. Once it dries, it remains fluffy. One downside to painting with puff paint, is that eventually it will break down so it is best reserved for sensory art and not that masterpiece you hope to keep for twenty years. That being said, puff paint is amazing! It has remained one of my favorite ways to incorporate sensory play into art and allow for unlimited exploration.
Benefits of Sensory Play
Sensory play is an important learning tool for children of all ages! Sensory play allows children a safe space to explore their world using multiple different senses at once (Vanover, 2018). Through sensory play they can learn:
- Science concepts such as cause and effect and how their world works
- Math concepts such as volume and measurements
- Social skills when working with other children or learning how to ask a parent for help
- Language associated with the sensory activity
- Social emotional skills such as resiliency, problem solving, and self-regulation.
Ways to use Puff Paint
One thing that I love about puff paint is its versatility. Over the years I have used it for so many things. Here are a couple of my favorites:
- Painting on printer paper, construction paper, or cardstock
- Painting on on cut up cardboard or to decorate a cardboard fort/ box
- Painting with various tools such as paint brushes, forks, spoons, hands and strings
- Throw it in a sensory bin with various toy animals or blocks (make sure they can get wet)
- Add in some nature items to stick to your puff paint (sticks, grass, leaves or flowers)
- Put it in a sensory table with water color swirled in. You can place paper on top and when you pull it off you have a swirled painting
- Put it in condiment bottles to squeeze lines onto your paper
Puff Paint
Prep Time
15 minutes
Ingredients
- Shaving Cream
- White Liquid School Glue
- Food coloring or washable paint
- Several small bowls (I like to use metal pie tins)
- brushes or spoons for mixing
- 1 cup measuring cup
Steps
1
Gather all of your ingredients together on a washable surface. I will often place butcher paper or a disposable table cloth down if I am worried about a mess.
2
In three separate bowls mix one cup of glue with one cup of shaving cream. Add more shaving cream or glue to get the desired thickness for your project.
3
Add it your colors, I have used liquid water color, washable acrylic paint, and food coloring successfully. (Just note that if it doesn’t say washable, or if you use food coloring, it will stain everything)
4
Grab your brushes and paper and paint to your hearts content! See the above section for additional ideas on how to use puff paint.
Tips
- Whether you are in a classroom full of children, or at home, I encourage you to include your children in the whole process. Let them pour and mix the ingredients. Let them spill and make messes and clean up throughout the process. Yes, it takes more time and effort on our part as parents and teachers, but through it children learn so much more than if we just hand them the paint ready to go.
- This recipe is for three colors of paint, but you are welcome to make as many colors as you want. How many colors I offer, depends on my goal for the activity. I will often only use three colors when I am making puff paint to encourage children to mix the colors themselves and discover what happens. It’s okay if it’s messy, or crazy, or if they mix all the paints together and get a brown. They are learning
- cause and effect
- color mixing
- resiliency and problem solving if brown was not their intended outcome
- Puff paint takes time to dry, make sure you have a space that you can lay your artwork down or hang it up to dry for several hours
References
Vanover, S. T. (2018, July 18). The importance of sand and water play. NAEYC. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/blog/importance-sand-and-water-play
One response to “How to make Puffy Paint”
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