Monday 24 September 2012

Chalk Art

The boys have recently found a box of giant sidewalk/playground chalks and I'm having trouble keeping them off the floors and walls...


We like to put giant sheets of paper on the floors and walls, as seen in a previous post, but I thought I'd try and find some more ideas, this is what I found (thanks to Eduart 4 Kids):

  1. Use it outside as it says, it’s sidewalk chalk. Get hold of the thick, colourful pieces of chalk often called sidewalk chalk that have lots of colours included. The chalk often comes in a bucket. On a nice day allow the children to go outdoors and colour all over the asphalt, sidewalk or any other area that will be easily cleaned up, either by rain or by hosing down with a garden hose.
  2. Transfer chalk drawings to paper: If the children express an interest in saving some of their chalk drawings or even if they don’t you can offer them paper to colour on with the chalk . Black or other dark construction paper is often more striking than plain manila or white. Once the children are done you will need to spray the drawings with hairspray as this helps set the chalk. It is very important that you only use the hairspray outdoors and do not let the children do it. The spraying should be for adults only.
  3. Create a solution of 1/3 c. sugar to 1 cup water. Have the children dip their pieces of chalk into this solution before drawing with the chalk on their papers. This helps brighten the chalk colours and will also help reduce smearing.Using hairspray will work with this activity also.
  4. This time around, make the paper wet first and then give the children dry chalk. Have them use dry chalk on wet paper. You can experiment by giving he children different types of paper wetting each of them before drawing. The best way to make the paper wet is to fill up a rectangular basin with water and lift the papers in and out of it.
  5. Instead of making the paper wet with water, give the children paintbrushes and liquid starch and have them paint the paper with the liquid starch.Use the chalk to colour over the paper with the starch on it. (This also brighten chalk colours and helps reduce smudging.)
  6. Sand art: Chalk is great for creating sand art. The children can be given a hand grater and along with an adults careful supervision grate the different colour chalk into separate bowls. Once you have enough chalk you can do 2 different types of sand art. Firstly you have the children use a paintbrush and paint some glue onto a blank sheet of paper. They can then take different colours chalk and sprinkle them where they want to crate a beautiful sand art. They can get really creative by making various shapes and borders with their glue.
  7. A second sand art activity is to give children small jars and arrange the different coloured chalk in layers to create a sand art bottle. Just be aware that you need a lot more sand (chalk) for this sand art activity that you do for the first.
And of course it's a very inclusive activity as many children can draw side by side

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