Sidewalk Chalk and Water Painting Activity
Kids can create unique “watercolour images” with sidewalk chalk and water!
We’re huge fans of sidewalk chalk activities here. We always have a bucket of chalk stashed just outside our front door. It’s our go-to when we’re waiting for daycare drop-off and pick-ups, when we want to get creative, or when we only have a few minutes to spare.
The hooligans love using chalk in the traditional way of course, but over the years, I’ve come up with some fun and creative art techniques for kids to do outdoors. Here’s our most recent outdoor art activity. It’s super-simple to set up and do, and the results are really pretty!
Supplies
- sidewalk chalk
- water
- large paint brush
Creating outdoor art with sidewalk chalk and water:
We often do our chalk activities out in the driveway, but our favourite place to play with chalk is on the patio stones in front of our front porch. The stones are all different sizes, and each one provides the perfect canvas for individual chalk paintings. That’s where we set our activity up today.
To create our chalk and water paintings, we simply decorated the individual patio stones with our chalk. We drew all kinds of different designs using lots of colours. For each drawing, we tried to cover as much of the patio stone as we could.
Then, we floated water across our drawings using a large paint brush. This is a great way to use those old paintbrushes that are too scruffy to use for home-decorating projects anymore.
This resulted in the chalk blurring together to create a lovely, soft, watercolour effect.
The toddlers and preschoolers really enjoyed the process because hey, what toddler or preschooler doesn’t love painting with water. I’ll tell you though – I totally loved the process too, so I think it would appeal to kids of all ages. I created quite a few images of my own.
Check it out:
First, my chalk drawing:
Now, look at how the water blurs and softens the chalk lines and colours.
Isn’t that cool?
Our wet chalk painting was perfect for making handprints!
What an easy, fun way for kids to get creative with sidewalk chalk!
More outdoor art activities:
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
