One of our beginning of the school year activities that we have done every year is we invite my sons class to our home and have a little get together so the parents and kids can get to know each other. This past school year I had a Back to School Ice Cream Social you can find all the fun details here.

I usually don’t plan many activities during our little gathering just because I don’t want to spend tons of time planning. One of the activities we did was an ice cream sensory play activity.

I made “ice cream” from shaving cream and I added a few drops of food coloring to it.

Using brown paper I drew a cone on it before hand. Like 3 minutes before hand, he, he, he. I was running late on everything but at the end as always everyone has a good time.

Their hands will stain with the food coloring but nothing a little soap and water won’t get off. I had wipes on hand so that they could immediately wipe them off instead of on their clothes.  I did this with 5-6 year olds and it worked out great. I did give them a few instructions before hand like don’t touch your clothes with your “ice cream” hands and don’t rub your eyes.

So to sum it up all you need is:

• brown construction paper
• food coloring
• shaving cream