If you run a child care center, make sure that you keep things creative this summer by implementing these two fun, summer based activities into your schedule at some point this summer. 

#1 Painting With Water Balloons

Painting with water balloons can be a really fun activity for the kids at your day care. It combines art and creativity with physical fitness and outside time. It can be messy but it can also be a lot of fun and a great learning and exploring experience for your students.

It is pretty simple to set-up. You are going to want to take water balloons, and use a funnel to put a few drops of washable craft paint inside of each balloon. After you put the paint inside of the balloon, fill it up with water and tie it off like normal.

Then, outside, set up poster boards for your students to paint. You may want to clip the poster boards onto a chain link fence or prop them up against something sturdy so they don't fall down when hit with a water balloon. You can put the poster boards flat on the ground so that your students are throwing down at the poster boards instead of up at them.

Put your students in some smocks or ask their parents to send clothes that they can get messy. Then, let the kids to to work throwing the water balloons onto the poster board. They will have to learn how to throw the balloons with enough force to pop them and how to create with splatter paint.

#2 Ice-Based Sidewalk Chalk

Next, mix up typical sidewalk chalk with ice-based sidewalk chalk. What you are going to need to do is mix together equal parts water and corn syrup to make the mixture for the ice chalk. Then, in separate bowls, add washable paint colors to this mixture to create the color for the chalk. Next, take the mixture and put it into popsicle trays or ice cube trays and freeze them. You are going to want to do this the night before you plan on doing this activity. You can also prepare the ice sidewalk chalk further in advance if that works best for your schedule.

When it is time to use the ice-based sidewalk chalk, just put the popsicle/ice-cube shaped sidewalk chalk into bowls based on the color, and allow your students to pick a color to draw with. Encourage them to put colors they are done with back in the correct bowl.

The fun part about ice-based sidewalk chalk is that as they melt, the colors will start to look more intense and vibrant. Your students will enjoy getting to see how the colors change and how the "chalk" disappears in their hands. You may want to have a bucket of water or cleaning station for your student's hands when they are done with this activity. At the end, it is an easy clean-up for your as well. Just spray it all away and do it again the next day with your students!

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