The great outdoors

A Moment In Time

In our final days of the year, we rejoiced.

Not so much in what the children could do,

but more so in what they felt they could do!

Their designs were ready for a fashionista showing.

Taking a leadership role.

Exploring 'pencil sketching' to be able to revise their masterpiece.

Working independently to collaborate, sew and create.

Story-telling art...future illustrator!

Feeling like they are center stage!

Taking the time to observe ducklings and ponder.

Discoverers.

Leading a community gathering!

Bring new vision to familiar materials.

Chalk Creations

~ Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges. ~

Joyce Meyer

Out came the chalk and the world became filled with colour, chatter and laughter! The unique beauty of sidewalk chalk creations brightening the stark blank sidewalks as you walk towards a kindergarten playground is that, even when they aren't there, 

the sing song of children's joy rings out.

The children's ideas and wonder is made visible...there for all to see.

They have a canvas as big as their body and even bigger,

 and the freedom to colour their world and fill it with the beauty of their imagination!

Sometimes, it's just the freedom to rub and rub and rub and make soft dusty piles that invite fingers to smudge and smoosh.

Or creating a garden of hearts with a friend.

Rainbow swirls under smears of sky blue powder.

Pushing and smoothing and making uniform tracks that line up
 as fingers slide through silky hills.

It's only natural that sidewalk chalk creations have
 smiling suns and happy hearts with joyful grins!

The cylinder sticks change form to triangular prisms 
as sides are flattened while being brushed back and forth time and time again.
The children become ever-so-careful to not scrape their fingertips
 as they change the chalks shape.

Right then, something new happens! 
Water and paint brushes offer a new invitation.

Nature is painted with new colours.

Muted colours take on a vibrant hue.

Soft silky dust becomes a pasty bright paint.

Children take the chance to stamp their mark. 
'I WAS HERE!'

The children are inspired to bring nature into their artistic expression. 
They discover that more water means less colour.

Water and chalk
 to a scientific thinker
 offers a chance to consider, question and test out a theory.

If water changes chalk dust, what will it do to a chalk stick? Chalk absorbs water!

Drawing with chalk and colouring in with chalk paint and a story is created.

Chalk on rocks, different than chalk rocks!

The end of a brush spreading a joyful garden of children's creativity.

Does the water spread the dry chalk?

What about pouring water first, then drawing on the wet pavement?

Or why not just draw the chalk line first, then paint over it with a wet brush?

Simply taking chalk outside and opening up a waiting sidewalk, ready to be filled with the evidence of the wonderful world of childhood is a magical thing to do.

And then it is washed away. 
That's another thing about sidewalk chalk creations.

They are here and then gone.

Waiting to return again.

With their reminder

of joyful chatter

and sing song laughter

and memories of childhood play.