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Arts & Entertainment

Taking Art Outdoors with Sidewalk Chalk

Just add water to add more color and brilliance

The beautiful spring weather is a great time to take your art-making outside. Sidewalks and driveways provide a huge canvas for young artists.  Join in with your children and encourage them to draw big, using their whole arm and the movement of their bodies to draw images.  

Kids delight in tracing and being traced as well as adding details of clothes, shoes and accessories to their self-portraits. Chalk drawings are also a great way to practice drawing shapes and lines that mark the beginning of letters and numbers.

Both gross and fine motor development benefit from the opportunity to draw big with the whole arm as opposed to the small movements of handwriting on paper. Follow your kids' lead and enjoy watching how they experiment too.  Wet chalk can be lots of fun; it creates less dust and the colors are more brilliant.  Try dipping chalk in water as you draw for brighter colors and experiment with mixing colors with the chalk.

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Story-telling and character development can also be explored as children create unique characters and add friends and environments for them. Try drawing a path with signs and symbols for your child to follow.  Walk on the line, turn around at a circle, jump on the square.   Better yet, invite your child to draw a path and symbols for you or a friend to follow.

Finally, remember that chalk isn't limited to just the sidewalk.  Sidewalk chalk works well on paper too and is particularly brilliant on darker paper.  Try drawings on recycled cardboard or dark construction paper.  

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Again, the chalk can be dipped in water to reduce the dust and create more brilliant color.  To preserve chalk drawings on paper and cardboard and reduce the rubbing off of the pigment, spray with a light coat of hairspray (best applied outside for ventilation) - the chalk color will initially fade as it is sprayed but as the spray dries it will return to its brilliant color and will be fixed to the paper.

Enjoy!

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