Paint Recipe – Surprise Color Sidewalk Paint

Have you ever done an activity with your child that morphed into something else? That is what happened with our Surprise Color Sidewalk Chalk. I had originally intended it to be a fun way to reveal hidden colors by creating baking soda and vinegar reactions. Along the way, we ended up creating a paint recipe. We have been having fun lately experimenting with baking soda and vinegar. Some of our favorite ways to do this are by playing Bubbling Addition and performing some Baking Soda Experiments.

Pour some baking powder into a plastic cup. Make sure you have enough to line the bottom and make a small well with your fingers. Drop a small spoonful of tempera paint in the canter and then cover up with more baking soda so the color is obscured.

Repeat this process for all the colors of paint you will be making.

Fill a squirt bottle up with vinegar and let your child experiment with pouring vinegar into the cups. My daughter was so surprised when various colors started appearing!

A little color bubbled up at first, but my daughter discovered that the more vinegar she added to the center of the cup, the more fizzy color appeared!

This activity is so much fun because kids don’t know what color eruption they will be making when they start squirting the vinegar. Plus, anything that bubbles and fizzes again and again is just plain cool!

We noticed that the reactions were producing some bold colors that would make perfect sidewalk paint and a paint recipe was born! Who wouldn’t want to paint with erupting sidewalk paint?

Before you can paint with these mixtures, make sure you use a spoon to combine the baking soda, tempera paint and vinegar until it reaches a paint-like consistency. The baking soda will have the tendency to settle back to the bottom, so stir before using.

We took our paint to the pavement and starting creating.