I've been waiting for a nice, sunny, beautifully autumnal day to do this activity- and it finally arrived today. After we got back from a birthday party, Isabelle was asking for "Outside, outside mummy" so I knew this would be the perfect way to get us out in the sun. These sidewalk/pavement "chalk paints" are made with just 3 simple ingredients:
*cornflour*Water*food colouringI didn't use any specific measures, I simply mixed until I thought I had the right consistency. It needs to be very runny (no resistance as you mix) otherwise the paint won't come out when you squeeze the bottle, due to the weird properties of cornflour. I made one batch of yellow and one of blue, and it took less than 5 minutes in total to mix them and pour them into the squeezy bottles I have been saving. Isabelle loved this activity. She loves being outdoors, she loves sauce bottles and she loves paint- so it was bound to be a winner. It did take a little while for her to work out how to squeeze the bottles to get the paint out, but she thoroughly enjoyed figuring it out by bashing the bottles around. It was a great workout for the muscles in her hands, as she did need to squeeze quite hard and for a prolonged period to get the paint out.
She made blobs and lines, I made the sun and wrote her name. Then, she stamped. That was her favorite part of the activity today, running through the paint and jumping in it. Luckily, I had the forethought to take her brand new shoes off and replace them with her old pair! She left tiny footprints which she bent down to examine while yelling "See, mummy!" She did some finger painting and some face painting too, and tried to paint the dog who was doing and excellent job of painting himself by lying down in all the wrong places! We chatted about the colours and the shapes, before she went to scale the vegetable patch fence and leave her paint marks there as well. She did need a full change of clothes afterwards - but that is just the sign of a great messy play day. I'm interested to see how well the chalk paint keeps for future use, as I can see this being a fun, messy play activity for a sunny winter's day. 
