4 easy ways to learn and have fun with sidewalk chalk {OPM #5}
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If you are looking for some nice ways to learn and play with sidewalk chalk, here are 4 amazingly-simple ideas to inspire you!
One morning we got so early to the park that no one else was there. First, we were happy to have the whole park only for us! But after some rides on the slides, Bogdan realized that a quiet and empty park is not so fun. So he asked me if we could play something fun together. I remembered that I had some sidewalk chalk in my bag and I created a game for him.
He was so happy and enthusiastic about the game that we did some more games in the next days. Now, the sidewalk chalk activities are one of his favorites! 🙂 And I like them too because they are easy to prepare and keep him busy for a long time. 🙂 We tried a lot of sidewalk chalk activities this summer and we invented many games! It’s amazing how many things you can do with those small pieces of chalk! (We have this big set of sidewalk chalk from Crayola that is great for creating a lot of activities!)
Here are some of Bogdan’s favorite activities.
1. Little maze for cars
Bogdan is a big fan of mazes and car tracks so I decided to combine them in this activity. I drew 5 parking spots for cars and 3 roads that connected them.
We parked the cars in different parking spots and I gave him simple challenges like “the car from spot 5 wants to get to spot 3”. He was happy to help the cars get to their spots. 🙂 This first maze was very easy for him so in the next days, we created some more complicated ones. He enjoyed them a lot!
2. The big circuit with challenges
This one kept him busy for almost an hour. And burned a lot of his energy too!
I drew a big circuit with irregular roads as you may see in the pictures. Then I added 3 types of challenges:
– the blue portions of the circuit are portions where he shouldn’t step
– the orange sign with arrows is announcing a place where he should jump
– the stop signs are announcing a place where he should stop and read the letters (or numbers) above the sign.
We had a lot of fun with this circuit! It was a good opportunity to practice numbers and letters too. After a while, I made the circuit even more engaging by challenging him to finish it as fast as he could without making any mistakes along the way.
3. The alphabet track
This activity combines play with learning the letters. We often draw car tracks with sidewalk chalk because Bogdan likes to play with the cars on tracks. This time I made the activity a little bit different. I wrote the alphabet letters on the track. Then I invited him to “ride” the car to a specific letter starting from A. (e.g. “The car wants to get to letter M. Let’s go!”)
During the ride, we were singing the alphabet song together to make it more fun. 🙂 You can do the same activity using numbers, shapes, or colors.
4. The jumping square (or the running square)
I drew a big square and divided it into 20 cells. In each cell, I wrote a number or a vowel or I drew a shape or a color.
The rule of the game was simple: He started from the first cell (1). Then at each step, I told you a number/letter/shape/color and invited him to find it and jump on that specific cell. Then we switched turns and he was telling me where to jump.
After we jumped a lot on the square, we tried a different rule. We were no longer jumping from cell to cell. We ran from one cell to another as fast as we could. One of us was saying a number/letter/shape/color and the other one needed to run on that cell very quickly.
If you want to try this game, you can make it more challenging by adding more cells or only using numbers or letters.
If you liked these ideas, I hope that they will inspire you for new activities with your kids! I wish you a lot of lovely playful moments with your little ones!
Discover more play ideas
Our Playful Moments (OPM) is a project to encourage simple ways of playing that make kids happy and build a playful parent-child relationship. You can find other nice play ideas in the below articles or you can discover the whole series here.
* All activities for young kids need adult supervision.
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