Just a box of chalk

One quiet day at the playground near our house this summer, I was playing a game of hide and seek with one of our kids when I noticed a young mom with an infant arriving at the playground with a box of chalk. Nothing about that was unusual, so I didn’t pay much attention to them, as I continued with our game. Thirty minutes later, while we were getting ready to leave the playground, I walked to the playground shelter to grab our stuff. It was then that I noticed that in those 30 minutes, the young mom had drawn the most adorable little giraffe on the ground using just chalk while the crawling infant explored near her. I walked up to her to share my amazement at her beautiful drawing. My kids noticed too and were similarly impressed when they ran over to check out the drawing. It was amazing what she could do with just a set of colored chalk. As we walked home that day, my kids asked me whether we could get some chalk to make our own chalk art. I happily obliged, as I wanted to try my hand at that too.

That evening, I went online and ordered a boxed set of chalk with 64 different colors. It arrived during a particularly rainy week in the summer, and we soon discovered that it was the perfect rainy day activity for the whole family. We started off with simple stripe drawings on the porch steps and moved on to more complex drawings like axolotls.

My kids also quickly discovered that mixing chalk with water was fun, and allowed them to create in different ways. Unfortunately, mixing chalk and water also makes chalk art a messier activity. However, it was nothing that couldn’t be solved with a warm shower and an extra load of laundry.

That was how our summer of creating chalk art on our porch started. Now, the box of chalk permanently lives on our front porch. I don’t think a week goes by without us using it to draw something. Some days, they are used to create beautiful works of art, and other days, they are used to write sweet notes to each other. Occasionally, even our neighborhood cats join in the fun by rolling on the chalk and leaving little chalk prints on the sidewalk.