Spring – Fun Family Home

Chalk is a great play idea for small children. It comes in fun colours and makes a bit of a mess, which kids love. It can be such a great way for kids to let their imaginations go wild and improve their fine motor skills which are so important for becoming independent. Have a look at my blog post about fine motor skills here: Why are Fine Motor Skills so Important for Toddlers and Preschoolers? – Fun Family Home Which kind of chalk should we use? We find the easiest ones for our kids to use are the big, thick, chunky chalks. They're easier to hold for little hands than the normal adult ones you'd find and kids can hold them any way they like. These are very similar to ones we have. Here you'll find 10 ideas of fun family activities to do with chalk: 1. Target Practice: Draw circles on the ground and invite your child to throw a beanbag into each circle. You could make it into a relay race where they have to throw a beanbag and run to another bucket with another beanbag in and throw that one and keep going until all the bean bags are gone. Count how many they got in the circles and see whether they can beat their score next time. 2. Colour Match: Draw different coloured circles on the ground. Get your child to run off and find different objects around the house or garden which match the colour. 3. Body Outline: Trace around the outside of your child on the ground and get them to decorate their chalk body with chalks or leaves or other natural things. 4. Hopscotch: Go old-school and draw a hopscotch. For a bit of a challenge, they throw a stone and have to hop over that number once they get to it. 5. Chalk Obstacle Course: Draw different stations around the garden. Ideas for the different stations are: jumping, hopping, you could add a play tunnel, zigzag lines to follow, wiggly lines, lines to jump over, squares to jump into, circles to throw bean bags into. 6. Road: Draw a road around your garden for your little one to take their ride-on along or for them to take their toy cars on. 7. Alphabet or Number Hunt: If your little one is learning to recognise the alphabet, write some letters on the ground round the garden and call a letter out. They have to run to that letter. They could even have a go at tracing the letter themselves over the top with a piece of chalk or write it next to yours. You could also do this to practise numbers. This was ours. My 6-year-old came and joined in too so we added bigger numbers to the pavement. 8. Chalk Bath: Let your little one draw all over the garden and then give them a sponge, paintbrush and watering can and invite them to wash the garden clean. 9. Shadow Tracing: In summer, take your child's favourite toys outside and show them the toy's shadow. Invite them to colour in the shadow. Now's the perfect time to talk about the sun and why there is a shadow and how we don't look directly at the sun because it can harm our eyes. 10. Freestyle Drawing: Have chalks out on the ground for your child. Why not have a go yourself? Your child will love that you're giving them this attention. Draw whatever you feel like drawing. Draw them. Draw an elephant. Draw a rainbow. Anything you fancy. You could even write theirs and your names to encourage letter recognition and language development. I hope you have fun with your chalks!