The Last Summer Days: Sidewalk Chalk Painting

Well, it’s official. Summer is over. Riley starts school today. Kindergarten!

I remember other moms making a really big deal out of their kids starting kindergarten. But since Riley has been in the same school for two years of Pre-K already, I’m just looking at this as another year.

Perhaps I will think differently once he has homework. That apparently starts after Labor Day. I know it won’t be much, but I do not remember having homework in kindergarten. And I KNOW he will not like having to do it.

But let’s talk about summer one more time before we really get into the school year, okay? The boys and I did something super awesome last Friday, and I’m designating it as our last fun summer days event.

After our huge success with rainbow pasta, I looked through my “Kid Projects” Pinterest board again to see if there was anything else I wanted to do with the boys. The minute I spotted this activity, I knew I wanted to try it. I made sidewalk chalk paint for the boys to use outside on our driveway.

I didn’t have enough baking soda to make the paint erupting, so I just mixed equal parts of water and cornstarch and added food coloring to make six different colors. QP found little squeeze bottles for me at Michaels (thank you!), which were so easy for the boys to manipulate.

Since I didn’t know if the “paint” would stain, I put plain white t-shirts on both boys, figuring they would have cool, colorful shirts after was all said and done. However, everything washed out completely. No staining whatsoever, even though I used both liquid and gel food coloring.

 

I was initially worried the paint wouldn’t really work on account of the mixture being really liquidy. I even added extra cornstarch to try to thicken it up. But the paint worked beautifully, and the consistency was really easy for the boys to squeeze out of the bottles.

 

I warned them lots of times that when the paint was gone, it was gone. I figured they would empty the bottles in no time. But the activity ended up lasting close to 30 minutes, which was not too bad. The driveway was mostly shaded, but it was still hot out there!

They loved mixing lots of the colors together, using their fingers to spread it around, and even painting each other a few times (Mama joined in on that part too).

But the coolest thing was how the paint felt when it dried. It was so soft and smooth. Riley loved dragging his hands through it and letting them dry. He kept asking me to feel how soft his hands were.

 

The paint even held up when they both decided to walk through their creation.

The boys rinsed off and played in the hose afterwards, way up next to the garage so we wouldn’t destroy their picture. And Riley has already asked to do this activity again. It took a little time to mix up the paint solution and make the different colors, but it was very easy.

And now I have a pretty, multi-colored driveway. At least until the rain washes it all away.

First day of school pictures coming up next. Brace yourselves because kindergarten, here we come!