Childhood Uncontained: Fun with SideWalk Chalk!

Let's talk about outside time. My Father's World curriculum recommends at least 30 minutes of outside time per day, which I think is great, not only for the kids but for myself. To go and get fresh air after being inside all day is really refreshing. A lot of times we walk to our neighborhood park, but that is an adventure in itself, packing everything up and usually, by the time we walk there, one of us is ready to go (normally me)! Sometimes it is easier to stay home and get our outside time in the backyard. Sure, it is easy to picture me and the kids frolicking around my backyard, watching butterflies, listening to birds chirp, while Harper and I cheer Beau on as he does flips on the trampoline... but that's not real. Here is what is real: we live in Texas and it's hot. Even in October, it is still 90 degrees out. And my backyard? Ha! I would say I have a patch of nice grass, but the rest has land mines of dog poo and lord knows what else. Since those are not the best conditions to let your almost one year old and four year old play around in, we have shifted our outside time to our long shady driveway, and sidewalk chalk is perfect for that activity. I love sidewalk chalk because it is super inexpensive, not too messy, and can provide hours of fun! We store our sidewalk chalk in old dishwasher pod plastic containers. These work great because they protect the chalk from the weather elements since we just leave them out on a bench on the side of our driveway.

I recently discovered sidewalk chalk holders and they have changed my life. I got two from Target for like 80 cents on clearance!

Here are some fun games we play with sidewalk chalk:

Tic-Tac-Toe

We gathered sticks for the X's and rocks for the O's.

Find the Number

I write a number on the driveway with sidewalk chalk. Beau then finds objects around of that many number. See we have two shoes, two pinecones, etc.

Sound Off

I first say a letter and Beau has to write it (pictured here letter A). Then, we discuss what the sound of that letter means and things that begin with that letter. Then we each pick one of those things and draw it.

A is for Alligator