Sidewalk Chalk Paint

I absolutely love when I set out to try a new activity and then one learning opportunity sprouts after another. We found ourselves going with the flow of learning experience to learning experience this morning.  Today's activities happened to have revolved around sidewalk chalk.  

I cannot tell you how much we enjoy sidewalk chalk! I found the initial idea at Mama to 4 Blessings, which lead me to the very easy recipe for sidewalk chalk paint at  Meet the Dubiens blog.  

I just made a bowl of equal parts cornstarch and water. I then poured the mixture evenly into muffin tins and then added the food coloring to each muffin section separately.  

This was certainly an interesting activity. The paint seemed kinda runny and didn't spread very easily on rough pavement. Lucky for us, the "porch" is smooth.  

 

I tried to demonstrate the difference of the appearance of the paint when you first apply it to the ground and then its appearance after it dries. The sun on the left is wet.  That same sun on the right is dried.  This impressed me very much.  :-)

 

Leave it to Jonathan to put his knee right in the paint.  No worries though; it dried just like chalk on his leg so it was easy to clean off.  

 

When we used up all the chalk paint, I decided to get out our store bought sidewalk chalk. As we drew on the concrete, we talked about the differences and similarities between the sidewalk chalk and the chalk paint.  

 

We ended the activity by "washing" away the chalk using spray bottles; an excellent fine-motor development practice.  

Both children said they liked using the chalk paint rather than sidewalk chalk.  We will certainly find ourselves outside painting more often than not.