The great thing about early intervention activities is that kids learn best through play and a lot of kids love sensory activities. This is a simple activity, but it can get messy. You’ve been warned.
You can adapt this activity to target specific developmental skills including receptive language, expressive language, pre-literacy skills, math skills, social skills, and motor skills. In this post I will focus primarily on motor skills, but if you’re interested in learning how to target the other skills, you can access the full tutorial in the store.
Fine motor skills are when we use our small muscles. Fine motor skills are important because they affect so many parts of our lives. Think about all the things that you do with the small muscles in your hands.
- Writing
- Tying shoes
- Opening packages
- Zipping a jacket
- Picking things up
- Turning the page of a book
- Opening a door
- Braiding hair
- Doing a puzzle
Simple Ways To Target Fine Motor Skills
Some kids need extra help strengthening those muscles and so we find ways to strengthen those fine motor skills. So, let’s look at some ways that we can do that with this activity.
- Find small objects to use as decorations such as beads (obviously, be cautious of choking hazards). Just picking up the small pieces and decorating the cake will help work on your child’s pincer grasp as he uses the tips of his fingers.
- Use tongs or tweezers to pick the items up with. This works on pincer grasp, hand strength, and eye-hand coordination. I put a link at the bottom of the page as an example of what I’m talking about. I use these all the time for different activities. If your child has a hard time picking up hard items like beads, try something soft like a pom pom.
- Use a spatula to spread the cream out. Using novel items is fun for kids, especially if it’s something they’ve seen you do.
- Have your child hold multiple pieces in one hand and drop them one at time onto the shaving cream cake. This can help with your child’s dexterity.
- Use a candle to draw shapes in the shaving cream.
- Make holds in the shaving cream and have your child drop beads or put candles in them.
- Use piping bags filled with shaving cream. Squeezing the bag will help with hand strength and coordination. If it’s big enough that the child has to use two hands, this will work on bilateral coordination.
Adapting To Your Child's Developmental Level
It’s important to take into account where your child is at developmentally when planning an activity. If your child is not yet following directions or imitating, then you’ll have different goals. You’ll want to work more on attention and engagement, so free play and exploration is going to be more important.
If you have a child that is able to participate in pretend play, you may want to provide an environment for your child to explore in that way. Understanding your child’s development can help you play at the right level. Playing too high or too low is not beneficial and you’ll see less growth. Playing at the right level will help your child progress more.
If you’re interested in learning more about adapting this activity to different stages of play, purchase the full tutorial where I will give you more examples of how to target specific skills for your child.
This activity is great for kids at an FDL of: 1-6
The Functional Developmental Levels (FDL) are based on The PLAY Project. If you would like to learn more about The PLAY Project, please visit playproject.org.
- FDL 1: Self Regulation & Shared Attention
- FDL 2: Engagement & Relating
- FDL 3: Intentionality & Two-Way Communication
- FDL 4: Social Problem-Solving & Mood Regulation
- FDL 5: Creating Symbols & Using Words & Ideas
- FDL 6: Emotional Thinking, Logic & Sense of Reality
This activity is great for kids primarily participating in stages: 1-6
The Stages of Play come from Parten’s Stages of Social Play.
- Stage 1: Unoccupied Play
- Stage 2: Solitary Play
- Stage 3: Onlooker Play
- Stage 4: Parallel Play
- Stage 5: Associative Play
- Stage 6: Cooperative Play
This activity includes: tactile
Our senses include more than the usual 5 senses. Some kids may seek certain types of sensory input and/or avoid other types.
- Visual: Sight
- Auditory: Sound
- Olfactory: Smell
- Oral: Taste (Gustatory) and using the mouth to speak, make sounds, eat, chew, drink, etc.
- Tactile: Touch
- Vestibular: How we process information about movement, gravity, and balance. We receive this information through the inner ear.
- Proprioceptive: How we process information about body position and body parts. We receive this information through our muscles, ligaments, and joints.
This activity is good for targeting the following developmental skills: communication, cognitive, motor, social
These are the main areas of child development addressed in the Early Intervention Tutorials
- Communication: receptive language, expressive language, listening, two-way communication
- Cognitive skills: cause & effect, literacy, math, science, problem solving, perception and concept
- Executive functioning: emotional control, flexibility, perseverance, self-monitoring, organization, planning, response inhibition, attention, task initiation, time management, working memory
- Motor skills: fine motor, gross motor, perceptual motor
- Social-emotional skills: peer interaction, self concept & social role, pretend play, behavior, group activities
- Adaptive skills: self-care, personal responsibility










Supply Ideas
- Shaving Cream
- Container or bowl
- Beads
- Candles
- Spatula
- Piping bag
- Figurines
- Any small things to decorate with that you can find in your home
Basic Instructions
- Gather items to decorate the cake (I just used whatever I could find in my house, no need to spend extra money)
- Set out the supplies
- Let your child create their own cake
- Be prepared for a mess 🙂
Extra Tips & Ideas
- Decide what developmental skills you want to target, and that will determine how you set up this activity.
- If you are targeting attention, or sensory exploration, then all you have to do is present the activity and let your child explore.
- If you are targeting fine motor skills, you’ll want to find items that will help with that (see the developmental skills section if you have purchased this tutorial)
- If you are targeting color identification, obviously make sure you have those colors
Get The Full Tutorial
To gain full access to this tutorial, you can purchase it by clicking add to cart.
This tutorial includes:
- A video tutorial
- Written instructions
- Printable lesson plan
- How to adapt to different stages of play
- How to build on different developmental skills
Adapting to Different Stages of Play
Depending on a child’s stage of development, you’ll want to adapt this activity based on goals that would be appropriate for the child’s growth.
The stages of play are:
- Stage 1: Unoccupied Play
- Stage 2: Solitary Play
- Stage 3: Onlooker Play
- Stage 4: Parallel Play
- Stage 5: Associative Play
- Stage 6: Cooperative Play
I’ll share ideas on how to do this in the Early Intervention Tutorials. You can purchase the full activity by going to the store.
Developmental Skills
In this section, I’ll identify which areas of development this activity targets. I’ll also give some pointers on how to specifically target each area. You can purchase this tutorial in the store.
Download
- Printable Lesson Plan (only available in the Early Intervention Tutorials)
Links
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