Brilliant Summer Fun Idea: DIY Chalk Rake

This time of year we love doing all sorts of things with chalk, but I never thought to make a sidewalk chalk rake before.

It’s a fun little engineering project for kids that comes together quickly and gives you the fun of drawing a whole rainbow (or just a lot of lines) at once.

The full details are at Laughing Kids Learn. I’m definitely adding it to my summer fun list!

Want more learning fun with chalk? Check out these reading and math activities done with chalk from Mom It Forward, this awesome roundup of learning and play activities from Pleasantest Thing and seven fun games to play with chalk from NutureStore.

How do you like to play and learn with sidewalk chalk? I’d love to hear your ideas.

[Photo via Laughing Kids Learn.]

If you are looking for fun active games to get the kids moving, I highly recommend this Floor Is Lava Board Game

Sidewalk chalk is a great way to entertain the kids and you don’t need to buy it. It is so easy to make at home and inexpensive too. Sidewalk chalk is great for adults who like to draw or doodle too. Grab the kids and find some concrete sit down and have fun.

Looking for more sidewalk chalk crafts? Check out these articles we wrote featuring Sidewalk chalk tutorials, ideas and activities too. We have a popular recipe over on our site too – DIY Sidewalk Chalk .

Making and using sidewalk chalk became very popular in 2020 as decorations and drawings were placed on the streets by children during the lockdown. If you are looking to make your own chalk check out this Sidewalk Chalk paint Kit it uses liquid chalk for squeezing and painting rather than hand drawing with solid sidewalk chalk.

A classic manipulative in the preschool and early elementary classroom is the snap cube, also known as math cubes, unifix cubes or unit cubes. These little one inch cubes often come in a set of 100 in 10 different colors, and they snap together so they’re easy to use for all sorts of math learning, measuring and more.

No Time for Flashcards has a cute robot printable to use with cubes to measure the height of each robot. That one is free but they also have other printable cube mats that are a paid resource.

Catherine & Co uses math cubes to teach kids about measuring volume. They make a letter from cubes and then measure the volume (there’s a printable worksheet in the post).

Pattern recognition is another fun and easy activity you can do with the cubes. You can use printables like these from Planning Playtime, or just make a pattern from cubes and have kids repeat it or figure out what comes next. There’s another good set of pattern printables at English Created Resources.

Because there are 10 sets of 10 cubes in a pack, these are great for teaching one to one correspondence, counting, sorting and basic addition and subtraction. English Created Resources has great printable number mats you can use to form the number from cubes and count out the number of cubes that corresponds to that number.

ParenTutor has a great collection of snap cube activity ideas, most of which are just pictures, but it’s work taking a look through the post for ideas for using them at home or in the classroom.

To give just a few of their examples, you can match linked blocks to the corresponding number of pieces, use blocks to find different ways to add up to 10, compare numbers and determine which one is more or less, skip counting and weighing different numbers of blocks.

You can also use unit cubes to learn letters, like with these super cute alphabet mats from Fun Learning for Kids. Kids can trace the letter, make it out of cubes and practice writing a word that starts with that letter.

Of course you can also use them to build things, since they are blocks, and there are tons of pattern mats on Teachers Pay Teachers. I also love these dinosaur themed mats from Lets Go to Learn on Etsy.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply