Make Your Own Sidewalk Paint
Sophie’s favorite thing to do in the world is color and draw. We go through coloring books in the blink of an eye and there’s never any paper in the printer because she takes it all to draw on. She’s become quite an artist if I do say so myself! I thought it would be fun to make some homemade sidewalk paint for her to use on the driveway, which is one of her favorite places to draw with chalk. The driveway is such a huge blank canvas with endless room to create! I knew she would love this!
What do you need to make sidewalk paint?
- Small containers
- Water
- Cornstarch
- Food Coloring
- Foam Brushes
How to make sidewalk paint
All you do is mix 1/4 cup cold water, 1/4 cup cornstarch and 6 to 8 drops of food coloring together, and repeat this process for every color you want to make. It doesn’t get much easier than that! Sophie enjoyed helping mix it up, and the food coloring looks kind of cool when you first put it in the corn starch mixture.
There’s a fine line between the paint being too thin or too thick. If it’s too thick it will be difficult to spread on the sidewalk; too thin and it’ll drip everywhere. So you may have to add more corn starch or water to get the right consistency.
Fun with sidewalk paint
Sophie painted a pretty rainbow and a garden scene. We didn’t make any orange paint, and I was really impressed that she suggested painting yellow on top of red to make orange. So you can easily turn this into a learning activity as well.
I’m sorry to say that the sidewalk paint didn’t hold her attention as long as I’d hoped. Her Daddy filled up her splash pool 10 minutes after we started painting, and she quickly left the hot driveway to cool off! So this art project might go over better if tried when the weather is cooler!