Wet Chalk Painting

Yesterday the toddlers made something super simple and inexpensive, with impressive results.

Ingredients needed: Dollar Store chalk, water, and construction paper. That’s it!

This was a wonderful activity for toddlers – the size of the chalk was perfect for them to grip, the water made the chalk wet and cold, and it was easy to make marks on the paper.

They were also less likely to stick this in their mouths. (They are 14-16 months old.) We have had issues with them tasting crayons, but they didn’t really try this very much. (We did do it one at a time though.)

If you have never drawn with wet chalk before, go try it now. It is one of the most enjoyable art experiences!

Some of the toddlers had a lot of fun banging the chalk and making circular clumps, which they then got to rub their fingers in to spread out.

That was fun too.

And surprisingly, they really enjoyed the process of returning the chalk to the paint cup filled with water.

I made 4 colors available – pink, orange, yellow, and purple – because we were using them to make a “sunset” picture.

Our summer theme this week is “Wild West,” so I wanted us to do an art project that ended up relating to the wild west, while still being fun process art. I think this fits the criteria!

After their beautiful paintings were dried, I just slapped on some brown strips of paper, which they had torn, and their handprint (it’s supposed to be a cactus – can you see it?) to make it into a wild west desert sunset scene!