Making Crayola colored play dough with sidewalk chalk as coloring

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Every so often we have a full on crafter-noon on the weekends, and we break out all the messy stuff I usually say no to on any other given day. Walmart was having such a great deal on Crayola sidewalk chalk this week, so I stocked up on a bunch of other things for our lovely crafter-noon. Crayons, markers, paint and chalk we just some of the things in their lineup – there was sooo much more, but I just wanted to keep it simple.

So when we got home, I wasn’t sure where to start… I wanted to do something outside the box and teach JP to push the boundaries of possibilities when it comes to creativity. I know he’s been asking me to make play dough recently, but how could I translate crayola markers/crayons/paint or chalk into squishy, fun play dough?

After some thought, it came to me. Why not crush up the sidewalk chalk, and mix it together with the salt needed to make the play dough? I decided to put my plan into action to see if it would work… I pulled out 4 bright colors that I thought would work nicely – red, green, blue and purple. I really wish I would have crushed up the black chalk to make home made black play dough, but I didn’t think of that until I used up all my cream of tartar. There really isn’t any good food coloring for black, so it’s a difficult color to produce at home, unless you have a strong coloring like black chalk.

The chalk sticks had a nice, soft texture to them yet held together without crumbling. It made my job pretty easy when I got my meat tenderizer out to crush them into powder! I did that for each color, and used the back of a spoon to make it fine.

Once it was crushed up, it was time to add a cup of table salt and mix it up so it distributed evenly. I continued to use the back of the spoon to get all the lumps out. In another bowl, I mixed up 2 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar, while I prepared 1 1/2 cups of water.

Using warm tap water, add 1 1/2 cups to the colored salt, and stir it around to get some to dissolve.. It won’t completely dissolve – just add the whole thing to the flour mixture and beat. This is where a kitchen aid stand mixer comes into great handy!

It will form into a thick, soft dough that’s perfect for playing with! The nice thing about using crayola chalk instead of some other form of coloring, you can use every shade within the rainbow of colors that you get in a box of 24 crayola sidewalk chalk.

Recipe

2 cups of flour
2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 cup of salt + chalk powder
1 1/2 cups of warm water

He had sooo much fun playing with it!

Another fun project we did together was with markers, coffee filters and water. It was fun to blend colors together to see how they mixed. All you need is crayola markers, coffee filters & a water spray bottle. Simply color the coffee filters however you like with the markers, and when you are finished spray it with water and watch the colors run together.

His favorite part was spraying everything wet!

…Then, we made our own colorful etch-a-sketch with crayons and paint! I used a piece of thick watercolor paper, and told JP to color all over it, and use all the crayons he wants. He got right to work!

..And colored some more.. Until the whole sheet was covered…

Did you know that if you mix red/blue/yellow together that you make black? Well, it’s not a fierce black like you would expect, but it’s pretty close. I thought it would be a nice way to teach JP about color mixing beyond the primary colors.