Shaving Cream Rainbow Paintings

{Shaving Cream Rainbow Painting by Mia, Age 5}

I associate rainbows with St. Patrick's Day, so I decided this would be a good craft for the month of March. After we finished making these yesterday, we saw a rainbow in the sky, which was fitting. When my dad saw the paintings, he asked, "Where's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?" Feel free to add a pot of gold if you want to, but I decided the rainbow itself was enough for my kids.

{Shaving Cream Rainbow Painting by Logan, Age 2 1/2}

Materials:

• cereal box
• pencil
• scissors
• newspaper
• Styrofoam tray
• shaving cream
• paint in rainbow colors
• paintbrushes (or Q-tips)
• bowl for tracing (optional)

Directions:

1. Cut a cereal box apart into separate panels. You will need one large side panel per rainbow. Save the narrow side panels for this fun craft.
2. Draw a rainbow onto the cardboard. I started my arc by tracing part of a bowl, and then just added lines onto it until I had six sections, one for each color of the rainbow. I then drew clouds below. Cut out your rainbow shape (and clouds if you are adding those).
3. Protect work surface with newspaper. Have kids wear old clothing or protect clothes with a paint smock or old shirt. (I have mine wear my old t-shirts with a clothespin at the back of the neck to make it fit more snugly.) Pour rainbow paints into a Styrofoam tray (ours is re-used from meat packaging; a bowl, plate, or plastic microwave dinner tray will also work). Add a squirt of shaving cream.
4. Let kids mix paints with shaving cream using paintbrush, fingers, or Q-tips, and then paint the rainbow as desired. (Mia's doesn't look the way I imagined it, but that is okay. It's her project so I let her do it her way. Of course, I was thinking of a rainbow being in the order of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. I had also envisioned white shaving cream clouds, but she mixed in red paint and was so excited to discover it made pink. This just goes to show how limited adult thinking can be.)
5. Allow paint/shaving cream mixture to dry completely before moving it and hanging it up. This takes awhile -- up to 24 hours. The final result will not be as puffy, but it will still have texture to it. You can display your rainbows along with some shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day.