Remember when we made rainbow crayons with broken crayon pieces leftover from the school year? If you missed it, read here. Well, now I have a fun summer activity for your broken chalk pieces!
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I've seen a few different recipes for sidewalk chalk paint. Most use either food coloring, tempura paint or chalk for the color component. Because I just moved into a new house, I don't want to take the chance that it stains the concrete. I've read that the paint and food coloring does come off even if takes a bit to wear off, and the sooner you wash it off the better. But, I decided to go the safe route with just using the chalk we have. If you want a good recipe for chalk paint made with food coloring read here.
Another variable in the recipes is how you get the chalk into a powder. I saw one video of a mom grating the chalk with a cheese grater. Another used a blender. Those actually looked pretty effective, but when I saw the "mallet method," I knew that was the right course of action for my three boys.
Ingredients:
Water
Cornstarch
Chalk
*You can actually omit the cornstarch if you have quite a bit of chalk. We didn't have any big thick pieces of chalk, so we did add cornstarch to one round of painting. Also, if you want the powdered chalk to last for another day or two of painting, adding the cornstarch does make it go a little farther. It can also be used to get different shades. See below basic colors with and without cornstarch.*
Directions:
1. Separate the chalk by color and put them each in a plastic ziplock bag. (Or, if you want to do a lesson on color mixing, like blue + yellow makes green, you can mix.) If you have zealous "pounders" you make want to double bag.
2. Pound the chalk into a fine powder. The two younger boys used toy hammers and we let our 7 year old use a real hammer. Obviously, what you use is up to each Mom's safety judgements. Be careful to watch for holes in the bag also.
3. Mix about 1 cup of water with 2/3 a cup of cornstarch. You would do a 1 to 1 ratio if using something like food coloring. (Again if you have a good amount of chalk you can omit the cornstarch.) The total amount of each really depends on how much paint you want to make. Mix well with a fork.
4. Pour the mix into individual containers. I did this inside, but I would recommend doing it outside to minimize the mess. I used the same muffin tin I used for the crayons. It's now our "craft tin." This didn't hold much paint, so we had to refill it twice. If you have these, they would work really well.
5. Add 1-2 tablespoons of chalk powder per color. Again, it depends on how much you are making. If your paint is too clumpy or thick add more water and mix well.
***Paint colors when omitting cornstarch.
6. Paint to your hearts content. We used these paint brushes, but any would do. Thicker rather than thinner would probably be best for little hands. Because it's Father's Day Weekend, we wrote messages to Daddy.
Wanna skip the DIY part, check these out.
SAVE FOR LATER, PIN TODAY!