August is around the corner, but summer is still going strong!
Today, I have 8 no-prep activities to get your kids’ brains and bodies moving. All you need is a little chalk!
- Handwriting, letters, numbers, or shape practice. Practice writing letters, numbers, and shapes. Write them as small as you can; then write them as big as you can!
- Gross motor letter recognition. Write the letters of the alphabet on your sidewalk. Have one person call out a letter and the other person (or people) race to jump on the letter.
- Gross motor phoneme recognition and spelling. Write the letters of the alphabet on your sidewalk. Depending on your child’s age/knowledge of different sound-spelling patterns include common vowel and consonant digraphs (e.g. ee, oy, ch, sh, th, etc.). Have one person say a word. Then, work together to identify each sound in the word and race to jump on each sound-spelling pattern.
- Gross motor obstacle courses or bike path. Draw an obstacle course and then run it! We include circles to jump into, lines to run along, and zig-zags to zig and zag between. And definitely don’t forget to include a few “lava” rivers to jump over!
- Measure and compare lengths. We have a book all about sharks, and one day, we took a measuring tape outside and marked the length of different sharks on our sidewalk. Then we marked our own heights (and the lengths of some random animals we found…like a worm.). We talked about how many “daddies” would have to stand on each other’s shoulders to be as long as a whale shark, and it was a blast! You could do the same thing with vehicles (scooter, bike, car, bus, train engine, airplane!).
- Hop scotch! We love this classic game for gross motor skills and number recognition!
- Pictionary. Take the inside outside and play a game of Pictionary on your sidewalk for some fine motor fun!
- Number line addition and subtraction. Draw a number line and label numbers from 0-20 (or 50…or 100!). Choose a number to start on. Then, choose your level and play!
- Level 1 – One person says “1 more” or “1 less.” The person on the number line hops to their new number and says it out loud.
- Level 2 – One person says “10 more” or “10 less.” The person on the number line hops to their new number and says it out loud.
- Level 3 – One person says “1 more,” “1 less,” “10 more,” or “10 less.” The person on the number line hops to their new number and says it out loud.
- Level 4 – One person says “___ more” or “___ less.” The person on the number line hops to their new number and says it out loud.
Your turn! What activities do you do with sidewalk chalk?