- Draw a story path featuring your children’s favourite story and draw important parts of the story from beginning to start (e.g. for Snow White draw a mirror, a huntsman, 7 dwarves and an apple) so they can recreated the story as they walk along the path
- Write all the letters of the alphabet onto the pavement and let your children find something in and around the house that starts with each letter (e.g. B for book)
- Let your children draw a family portrait
- Lay down in different positions and let your kids trace the outline of your body, alternatively you can have them draw around different objects
- Play a game of hopscotch
- Draw a treasure map and let your little pirates look for the chest in the garden
- Let your children draw themselves and take a picture of them with their self-portrait
- Draw a 3×3 cube and add a 10th cube in the top middle, add numbers from 1 to 9 (higher numbers at the top end) and number 10 at the top. Then let your children throw bean bags into the cubes and see who has most points after a set amount of turns.
- Practise simple maths using the cube from number 8. Throw a bean bag or a little stone into two fields and add up the numbers.
- Draw a circle with two smaller circles and a centre in the middle (imagine a dart board). Give each area a different amount of points (go higher from outside to centre) and let your children throw little stones or bean bags to collect as many points as possible.
- Play a game of tic tac toe
- Draw the outline of a farm, underwater world or a landscape of your choice and fill the painting with nature materials such as branches, leaves or sand
- Play a game of chalk hangman
- Put your chalk into a glass that is ¾ filled with water to soak it, leave for ten minutes and then carefully take out the chalk to draw a painting with the wet chalk. The colours will be much more vibrant than with dry chalk, but be careful: Wet chalk snaps quite easily!
- Practise numbers by drawing circles with numbers in them and jump from one circle to another saying them out aloud. Let older children jump only on even or uneven numbers or prime numbers.
- Randomly write the letters of the alphabet onto the pavement and let your child draw from letter to letter. This also works with numbers.
- A great way to practise shape and colour recognition is to draw lots of different coloured shapes onto the pavement. Let your kids run around and shout out a shape and a colour. Who runs onto the shape with the correct colour gets a point.
- Draw the foot prints of animals such as bear, wolf, elephant, deer, cat or horse
- Make chalk paint: Put broken bits of chalk into a freezer bag and bash the chalk until you’ve got a bag full of chalk powder. Pour the powder into different glasses and add some water and stir with a paint brush to dissolve the powder – get creative!
- Explore textures: All you need is a piece of paper and a couple of coins or leaves. Put them under the paper and let your little ones rub the chalk over them to discover the imprint the objects leave on the paper.
- Practise spellings: Write the letters of the alphabet in random order and let your children spell out words by throwing bean bags onto the letters needed.
- Test your child’s balance by drawing a straight and/or wonky line and letting them walk along it without “falling off”
- Draw a colourful rainbow and don’t forget a big pot of gold!
- Play pictionary with a twist: Blindfold the drawer and whisper the word they have to draw into their ear. The other child has to guess what they are drawing – this game is also great to play in teams.
- Let your kids write little notes for when daddy comes home from work
- Trace your shadow: Mark a spot and stand on it at different times during the day. Trace your shadow with a different colour each time and see how the sun and your shadow move.
- Draw a gallery of happy faces and add hats, moustaches or crazy hair
- Give your children some toy cars and let them draw their own race track or a village with streets, car parks and traffic lights
- Draw chalky fireworks onto black paper and use chalk dust for details such as sprinkles
- Make magic dust: Put a sheet of wax paper on the floor and pour some salt onto it (amount of sand you want to make), then roll a piece of coloured chalk through the salt (a couple of times) and see how the chalk colours the salt
Our housing association won't let the kids chalk on the pavements.I've stumbled it for you
They aren't allowed to draw with chalk? That's shocking. Thanks for sharing x
spoil sports! what harm does it do? next time it rains it washes away, or a cup of water and a brush if its not going to rain that day. love some of these ideas, will need to get some chalk
None, some people are just ridiculous…
what a huge amount of ideas! I only ever used to do hop scotch as a kid!
So much fun ahead for you then 😉
Gosh, so many ideas! Absolutely going to steal the first idea about the storytelling.
We love playing with chalks on the path and my two spend hours in the Summer drawing and making games up – I'm definitely going to use some of these ideas x x
Wow, what amazing ideas! I especially like the shadow tracing idea!
Sumbled and pionned such fab ideas!
Thanks, Becky x
Great ideas – lots of fun!
These are fab! Now my boys are older they like to draw targets on the wall and shoot at them with their water pistols.
Oh now that's one to add to the list in my head. You could even through water bombs 🙂
A huge list of great ideas, I love the trace your shadow one! Please do share this one on Country Kids with me.
Wow, this post has made me want to order some chunky chalk immediately. Can't wait to try the treasure map, my children will love doing that. Thanks for all the ideas. Found you via the Parenting Pin-it Party btw, this is me on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/blubirdsunshine/
I love the idea of a pirate treasure map!
Thanks for joining in with Monday's Parenting Pin-It Party! Following you on Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/loveallblogs) x
WOW, you have a ton of great chalk ideas. Thanks for sharing them and I can't wait to try them all. I pinned it on my outdoor summer board. I jumped over from Monday's Parenting Pin-It party. This is me, http://pinterest.com/howtorundaycare/
Loved this post and have pinned. Fabulous!
Wow what a lot of ideas, i just used to use them for hopscotch. Feel like i’ve missed out on more fun now…
Feel very inspired now – thanks! x
Great ideas 🙂
Some great ideas, we have just bought my son some outdoor chalks for his birthday last week. Not had the chance to use them yet but he can’t wait to get cracking 🙂
neigbours would go up the wall if the kids round here did this
Its a shame kids don’t play with things like this anymore, i do try but people don’t tolerate such things and sometimes its not worth the trouble.
What great ideas! My two love a good scribble outside!
I haven’t seen chalked pavements for years, not even the good old hopscotch grid .
Some fab ideas here! will definitely try some x
some great ideas here Carolin thanks – all linked up in my post x
This is a great list Carolin! We love using Sidewalk Chalk! The best bit is that it doesn’t last forever!
Karin @ SwimFin
Thank you 🙂 We love chalk too, Amy always has so much fun with it x