Today is a beautiful, mild, and sunny day.  My children and I decided to spend the afternoon outdoors.  After using the leaf blower to clean off our large concrete porch we took out our container of sidewalk chalk.  My 3 year old daughter started making suggestions of picutres she wanted me to draw for her.  I was hesitant at first, my drawing skills are not all that great.  I gave it my best shot and drew her first request which was a child sticking their tongue out and blowing raspberries.  The longer I had the thick bright piece of chalk in my hand the more detailed and fun my picture became.  I was suprised by my sudden burst of creativity and drawing skills!  I realized that this simple play time adventure was really fun!  I drew a few more of my little one's requests to her liking.

With October in the near future I thought it would be fun to think of some Halloween and Fall things to draw.  My daughter enjoyed thinking of Halloween items.  We came up with a jack-o-lantern, corn stalk, and a ghost.  We giggled at our funny seasonal drawings.  I drew the outline of the items, and my little one had colored them in.

I thought the large concrete slab and colorful chalk could also be a great learning tool.  My daughter and I wrote the alphabet together, we said each letter before we wrote it.  Next we wrote the numbers 1-20, again saying outloud each number as we wrote them.  We enjoyed one last learning opportunity while we played, we walked around from one drawing to the next and I pointed to each of the different colors as my daughter named the color.