Month: June 2013
Driveway Sensory Drawing: Wet Chalk!
Drawing with wet chalk on a driveway is such a fun sensory experience for outdoor play and one that develops so many areas of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and visual motor skills through sensory play. Drawing milestones like coloring with chalk is part of childhood but this driveway chalk activity builds many skills!
Wet Chalk
We played outside one cool morning and discovered something really fun…We had left a couple of pieces of chalk outside during an overnight rainstorm.
The texture of wet chalk is so cool! It smears on the driveway so easily and is the neatest texture. For children struggling with tactile defensiveness wet chalk is a great sensory experience because you can grade the dryness or the wetness of the chalk texture.
There was only red and blue that were soaked through, but they combined to make a pretty nice rainbow!
How to make wet chalk
There are several ways to make wet chalk to use on a driveway.
- Soak driveway chalk in a bucket of water overight or for a few hours.
- Draw with chalk on a wet driveway. After a rain works or spray the driveway with water from the hose.
- Crush chalk into a powder and mix water into the chalk dust to create a messy, thick chalk paint. This liquid chalk paint recipe explains more on this strategy.
You can select the wet chalk method that works best for you!
Once you have your wet chalk created, you can get started with the chalk art.
Wet Chalk Activities
We’ve created a list of chalk activities here on the website before so any of those ideas would work. But if you want to explore development of other skills, try these wet chalk activities:
- Make a chalk rainbow
- Make a driveway obstacle course
- Create letters and use a wet-dry-try method of writing the letters
- Mix colors
- Use the wet chalk for body painting
- Paint rocks
- Write names or words
Outdoor Sensory Play
Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:
- Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
- Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
- Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
- Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
- Colors Roll & Write Page
- Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
- Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
- Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
- This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.
Patriotic Craft Fingerpainting Fireworks
This finger painting fireworks craft is a great July craft for toddlers that can be used to celebrate the Fourth of July with toddlers and preschoolers! Add this one to our favorite creative painting ideas!
Finger Paint Fireworks
This weekend I had 5 kids (ages 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) and I had to think of something to keep them all busy. Finger painting is a fun craft for kids all ages, the babies love feeling the different texture of paint on their fingers and playing with the paintbrushes. I pulled out the paper and let them go to town with the washable finger paints!
Hammer Golf Tees into The Ground
Do you know the hand eye coordination benefits of hammering golf tees into the ground? This fine motor and hand-eye coordination activity is great for summer!
We took this one a step further and used our hammer and golf tees in other ways, too!
Hammer Golf Tees Into the Ground
This was an easy (and fun) activity that we all enjoyed. We have played with golf tees in the past, and had SO much fun (check it out!). My Little Guy will often times ask if I can pull out the golf tees for him to hammer into an empty egg carton.
We took this activity outside and hammered away! This was big time fun for Little Guy and Big Sister. They sat for a long time as we hammered golf tees all around the big tree in our back yard.
Hammer Golf Tees into a Box
Baby Girl got in there, too. She would pull the tees out and put them back into the holes.
We ended up adding the yarn again to connect the tees for more fine motor (and fun) play.
Share It Saturday
Playful Learning
Taco Empanadas
This taco empanadas recipe is a quick and delicious meal you can make using leftover ground beef, chicken, or ground turkey. Leftover taco meat is perfect for making taco empanadas! This Mexican empanada dish is a delicious one for all ages. If you are looking for a cooking with kids recipe that the whole family will love, this one is it!
Taco Empanadas
This recipe is just too easy not to share with you…and the best part is our kids love it (and love to help make it)! I made these one day last week for a play-date and the kids thought they were pretty neat.
You can improvise the filling with anything you think would be good…I have made them with chicken, ground turkey, and the traditional beef empanadas.
Taco Empanadas Ingredients
- Mexican pastry shells
- 1-1.5lb ground beef
- One package Taco Mix
- 6oz salsa of your choice
- Start out with these pastry shells, I get them in the local Mexican store in the refrigerator section. I usually pick up several packages and keep some in the freezer.
4. Fill the shells with the meat mixture and fold over.
5. Use a fork to press the shells together.
6. Wisk an egg and lightly paint the shells with the egg. My four year old daughter loves helping with this part.
7. Using the fork while pressing into the dough is great for her little fingers.
8. Bake in oven at 375 degrees F for approximately 20 minutes or until golden brown. Delicious!
Pair this recipe with other easy dishes: