Keep your kids engaged in creative outdoor play for hours with simple baby-safe homemade sidewalk chalk paint. Unleash your child’s creativity and gain a little free time for your hot summer read this week. Whipping up a batch of this bright sidewalk paint is fast and cheap too!
We love painting ’round these parts. From pizza box painting to edible bathtub paints, my children love to get their hands on fun art projects for kids, the more mess, the more pleasure. Summer loved the sidewalk water painting activity from First Art and when I saw homemade sidewalk chalk paint on Pinterest we tried it at her water-themed birthday party. It was a mega-hit!
Making chalk paint is really easy. This stuff is completely baby-safe, since it’s an edible paint made from nothing but water, corn starch, and food coloring. You can mix it up in a muffin tin, hand your child a paintbrush and let them discover their inner artist! Spoons, sponges, stampers, and cotton swabs also make great painting tools that can really draw out the sensory activity.
Use homemade chalk paint to add a semi-permanent foursquare grid or hopscotch squares to your driveway. It washes away easily with water and is an unexpectedly creative way to fit kids art activities into a birthday party, mom group meeting, or Sunday school curriculum.
Alright, enough chatter. Let’s paint!!
Baby-Safe Homemade Sidewalk Chalk Paint
Materials:
- cornstarch
- water
- food coloring
- muffin tin
Instructions:
Stir together water and cornstarch in a medium bowl until it’s smooth. Pour into the wells of the muffin tin and add a few drops of food coloring until you reach a bright rainbow shade. Dip in a brush and let watch your driveway come to life!
Be sure to keep the paint stirred as the starch will begin to settle to the bottom after a few minutes. Swirling the brush around in the well should do the trick.
For more hands-on learning and painting ideas for toddlers check out First Art. It’s available on Amazon (yep, that’s an affiliate link) and they give the “Look inside” option where you can glean tons of ideas just by checking out the generous number of pages they show you for free. I may or may not have done this before buying the book. Wink, wink.
Yep, I guess you can use this for toes too. Chalk paint pedi, anyone?
Just a note… this paint is bright, like sticks of sidewalk chalk bright. The photos here show the paint in a more watered-down shade because I was running low on cornstarch that day. Nevertheless, the kids had a blast and the paint did show up well.
Be sure to check out more of our kids playtime activities and follow my Tot School and Preschool Ideas board for even more creative learning activities for little ones.
Thanks for this! Little J may not be quite ready to try it yet, but by the end of the summer I bet he would love doing this!! Pinned!
Chelsea, you know, I think I’d give it a try, even if you think he’s not ready, as long as he can sit up he’d probably enjoy dipping his fingers into the paint and smearing it around a piece of butcher paper or even the sidewalk. Water painting is a great activity for littler ones too. Just give them a container with water, a spoon or brush and let them splash it around on the concrete. Thanks so much for visiting.
This is such a delightful activity Jelli! I used to do this at the child care centre and completely forgot about it. Thanks for sharing and for reminding me of this.
Wishing you a delightful day.
xoxo
You bet, Jenn! We really had fun with it last week. In fact, my kids wanted to do it every day. To save me the mess we actually did some spray chalk paint a few times. Having it all contained in a squirt bottle was a fun (and less messy) spin on things. How fun that you used to work in child care! Do share your tips for taming two year-olds!! 😉
Honestly, I would love to play with homemade sidewalk paint as well! Its so fun to do with little kids 🙂 And you are an incredible photographer!
I do have fun painting with them, Mary Frances. I love art activities and think I have just as much fun (or even more!) than they do getting messy and spreading bright colors all over our sidewalk, hands, arms, clothes… 😉 Thanks for stopping by and for your kind compliment. I’ve still got a long way to go with photography but it’s a fun journey!
Love this. Thank you for sharing via Mommy Monday!!
XOXO
Such a fun idea, Jelli!
Thanks so much, Kristi! My kids and I all had fun with this one!
Pinning! Our Summer break just started and SO looking for ideas to do with the kids 😉 Found you via three in three linky 😉
Ursula @ kraft&mint blog
http://kraftmint.com
Love this! Is it possible to turn these from liquid to solid format like chalk used in schools? It’s for a child center for migrant toddlers and children below 12. They tend to put chalks in their mouth and this is a brilliant solution. Thank you!
Hindley, this recipe isn’t for solid chalk, but here’s a great sidewalk chalk recipe that is! Hope you find something that works for you and the children.