It feels so special to go get your hair cut, and where appropriate, your beard trimmed! Let’s play barber as we lather up and pamper our pumpkins and gourds!
Set up Time: 10 minutes
Directions
Gather together some of your favorite pumpkins or gourds. Hot glue some googly eyes on them. Gather shaving cream and tools that can represent the types of tools a barber might use to lather on shaving cream and shave. Be sure to talk to children about safety–you can mention that real razors aren’t safe to use, so we are using pretend ones! We used paint brushes and plastic spoons as our tools.
Let children lather on the shaving cream and “shave” it off with their tools
Materials
- Shaving cream
- Paint brushes
- Pumpkin, squash or gourds
Learning Through Play
Cognitive: Pretend Play – Think back to your childhood when you might have longed to cut the hair off of your dolls…it is indeed tempting! Children love to play hairdresser and barber, and this activity is a way to let them indulge without permanently damaging your dolls! Extend this by hot glueing yarn or straw on to the pumpkins to play hair dresser.
Language: Conversation – Have children ever had their hair cut? How did it feel? Did they like having their hair washed? Did the hairdresser or barber use any other tools (comb, blowdryer, etc.). This can be a very exciting experience for young children and this is a great thing to elicit rich language from children.
School Readiness: Rhymes – This is a great chance to narrate or invite children to think of some rhymes that rhyme with hair: chair, stare, pair, bear, tear, care, flair!
See this activity in the Rayz Kidz app along with the other fun sensory activities. Rayz Kidz is your trusted source for play-based activities featuring over 100 themes and 500+ hands-on activities and clear descriptions of the beautiful learning that is happening through play.
