A Homemade Sidewalk Paint recipe that you can make in minutes with cornstarch, water and food colouring. Whip up a batch today for a fun and easy outdoor art activity for toddlers and preschoolers .
The hooligans LOVE painting our driveway and sidewalk in summer time. Often, they use rollers and brushes to paint the sidewalk with water, but every so often, for a treat, I whip up a batch of colourful homemade sidewalk paint.
They love this paint! So do I, actually. It’s so easy to make! It’s just three ingredients – corn starch, water and food colouring.
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It’s a great homemade paint for preschoolers to for an outdoor art activity in the driveway. It goes on nice and thick, and when it dries it looks like sidewalk chalk. And it rinses right off with the garden hose. Even when I accidentally forget, and let the paint stay on the driveway and sidewalk overnight, it doesn’t stain.
Painting on the driveway or sidewalk is so fun for kids because they’re not confined to keeping their art on a piece of paper. They can reach and stretch and make huge sweeping brushstrokes to cover as much area as they want. And they get creative with their thinking and they look for other things to paint too, like sticks and stones and toys (they painted stones here), and even themselves…
If you’ve added a lot of food colouring to your sidewalk paint, there may be some staining on your child’s skin, but it will come off in a warm bath or with a bit of shaving cream.
I hope you’ll give our recipe a try! Your kids will love it!
For your convenience, I’ve included affiliate links to some of the products in this post.
How to Make Homemade Sidewalk Paint:
Ingredients and Supplies:
- A sectioned container
- cornstarch (cornflour in the UK)
- water
- food colouring (I used Wilton Icing Gels)
 or Liquid WatercolorsÂ
- small whisk
I love how deep the wells are in this container.  It was  pre-packaged fruit tray from the grocery store. Each compartment is perfect for holding a lot of paint, and I fill the middle section with water for rinsing the brushes.
Mixing your sidewalk paint:
Add 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp cornstarch to each section of the container.
Add a little less than 1/4 cup of cold water to each section. Add just a little at a time so you don’t over-do it. Whisk until the cornstarch has completely dissolved. If you’ve played with cornstarch and water before, you’ll know that it is a non-Newtonian fluid, and can turn from liquid to solid, and back again depending on how much you handle it. You want your paint to be thick enough that it drizzles from the whisk.
Add your food colouring, and stir well.
Now you’re ready to hit the sidewalk (or in this case, the driveway).
The toddlers and preschoolers absolutely love this sidewalk paint.
You can brush it on just like you would with regular paint, but I love to drizzle and dab the paint to create thick puddles of colour.
When they were finished painting in the driveway, we moved up to the smoother surface of our front walk, and they continued painting there.
Add some chalk to the fun!
Someone got the bright idea to grab some sticks of sidewalk chalk and dip them into the paint. Â This made for a neat effect when drawing, but even more interesting was how the paint immediately hardened in layers when they dipped their chalk into each of the colours in the tray, so they ended up with these beautiful, multi-coloured sticks of chalk. Â They would then crumble the layers off and mash them into the pavement.
What fun!
The kids were happily entertained for about an hour with the small batch of paint I made on this morning.
Mix up a batch for your kids to try today!
If you liked this post, you might also like our:
Sidewalk Art with Chalk and Water
Outdoor Painting with Water, Brushes and Rollers
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
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Faigie
May 22, 2013 at 11:07 pmYeah some of them look like they were busier painting themselves than the sidewalk
happyhooligans
May 22, 2013 at 11:12 pmOh yeah! That’s half the fun! It’s neat. Every year, I have a couple of children who don’t like the whole wet/messy sensory experience, and there are always a couple of others who get into it with their whole bodies.
Aeryn Lynne
May 22, 2013 at 11:23 pmOMG I need to do this with my nephew. He’s addicted to painting, but so far he’s only had the pleasure of the digital kinda using Windows’ 8 Fresh Paint App (with use of real paint brushes though.) Thanks for the awesome tip! I can’t wait to get him painting in our driveway or sidewalk. 😀
Jen @ Mama.Papa.Bubba.
May 23, 2013 at 12:22 amLove the idea of using a sectioned container, Jackie! We always use a muffin tin, and it works just fine, but inevitably, the different colours slosh together. We’ll be doing it this way next time! 🙂
rebecca from thisfineday
May 23, 2013 at 2:42 pmMy kids love this stuff!! The only one tiny hang up is, when they paint on the white paint on the wood railings of the house… it kind of stains. Ooops, hope that will fade with time 🙂 So I have to make sure to tell them ONLY PAINT ON THE GROUND!! Great fun post!!
candacederickx
May 24, 2013 at 9:06 amWhat a great idea! And more economical I suppose than buying paint.
happyhooligans
May 24, 2013 at 2:22 pmThanks, everyone! So glad you liked this one!
Erin- The Usual Mayhem
May 25, 2013 at 9:26 amIf at least one kid doesn’t go home an unusual colour, they haven’t played hard enough 🙂
I love this idea, Jackie! Thanks for linking up to the Outdoor Play Party – hope to see you again next time!
kitchencounterchronicles
May 26, 2013 at 10:48 pmFabulous colours. I love how the hooligans are really getting into the fun!
Jody
May 29, 2013 at 8:07 pmCool. I bet my hooligans will love this too!
Tammy
May 29, 2013 at 10:20 pmDid this today with my grandsons (ages 3 1/2 and 22 months) and it was a huge hit. I need to invest in a large quantity of cornstarch so this can be a frequent activity this summer. Thank you!
Sugar Aunts
May 31, 2013 at 12:35 pmThis turned out great! We are featuring your post tomorrow on Share It Saturday. Our features theme this week is Learning Through Play The MESSY Way. And your post definitely fits in 🙂 We LOVE your ideas! See you again on Share It Saturday!
Colleen at Sugar Aunts
happyhooligans
May 31, 2013 at 10:00 pmThank you so much for featuring my post, Colleen! Just had a little peek around your blog. You’ve got some great stuff going on there. I’d love for you to pop over to my facebook page tomorrow, and link up a post of your own on my wall tomorrow! Lots of bloggers come out to share on my wall on Saturdays. It’s a great way for me to catch up on what I’ve missed during the week, and a super way to discover some great new blogs. Following you on Pinterest and fb now.
Tasha (@xocanadianangel)
June 5, 2013 at 6:00 pmHahaha this looks like such a blast. I love all the colours! Oh to be a kid again! 🙂
Janice - Fitness Cheerleader
June 5, 2013 at 10:07 pmWhere can I get the Wilton Icing Gels? This looks like a fabulous outdoor activity and I love how it starts off with eating fruit in order to have a tray to keep the paint in 🙂
happyhooligans
June 5, 2013 at 11:16 pmJanice, I get mine at the bulk/natural food store. I know Michael’s crafts sells them as well. Anywhere that you can buy cake-decorating items is where you’ll find them. If all else fails, I’ve just added an Amazon.com to my post.
Bev
August 9, 2013 at 7:20 pmThank you for the wonderful idea! My daycare munchkins had a blast painting our basketball court this afternoon. I let each child have a cup with one color, that they could trade if both parties were so inclined. We wound up with several Jackson Pollack splatter paintings. What fun!
Beth Henry
April 6, 2014 at 1:28 amDoes the paint also wash easily from clothes or will it stain?
happyhooligans
April 6, 2014 at 8:03 pmThe food colouring is quite diluted, but to be safe, you’d want to make sure your child wasn’t wearing good clothing when using this, Beth.
Emily
April 19, 2014 at 7:02 pmThis may be a silly question but 1/4 of what for the cornstarch? 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons per well?
happyhooligans
April 20, 2014 at 1:26 amOops! It’s a 1/4 cup, Emily! I’ll go in and edit that. Thanks!
Emily
April 20, 2014 at 8:37 amThanks! I’m kind of “challenged” when it comes to recipes so I just wanted to make sure!! 🙂
olgasek
May 2, 2014 at 8:46 amCould you also provide amounts in ml and grams? It’s hard to follow without having cups here in Europe 🙂 would be awesome if you could apply that to every future recipe. Thanks!
happyhooligans
May 2, 2014 at 8:58 amTry this tool, Olga: http://www.jsward.com/cooking/conversion.shtml
sjoukjebiere
May 6, 2014 at 8:16 amHi Jackie,
what a great blog you have!
I’ve got just one question. When you made the chalk paint is it possible to keep it in a container of closed bottle for some time?? Or is it for immediate use?
I want to make some as an treat for the kindergardenclass of my youngest daughter 😉
happyhooligans
May 6, 2014 at 1:57 pmI would think you’d be able to store the chalk paint. There’s nothing in there that would ferment or mould. I can’t guarantee it, but I would imagine you’d be fine making it ahead of time. It would need a good stir before using though, and you might need to add a few drops of water.
sjoukjebiere
May 9, 2014 at 3:29 amHi Jackie,
Thank you for your answer!
I did an little experiment myself, but the paint went very hard, like chalk. But perhaps i use a bit to much cornstarch 😉
Bek
June 25, 2014 at 9:53 amIt does go hard, but then I just add more water the next day. When we do this, we do it in muffin tins. I leave the tin outside, it dries up, and tomorrow we just add more water back in. It’s always worked for us…
Felicity
May 14, 2014 at 11:55 amJackie a while ago I saw a pic of the most amazing coloured play dough on one of your posts. It looked like a hardened version of multi coloured slime. Now that I have the time to make it I. A not for the life of me find the recipe or post. I think it had rainbow in the title. Can you help.
happyhooligans
May 14, 2014 at 12:03 pmWas it our rainbow playdough post, Felicity? Whenever I’m looking for something on my own blog, I just google my blog name and a couple of keywords, so to pull this up, I googled “hooligans rainbow playdough”, and it popped up. 🙂 https://happyhooligans.ca/rainbow-playdough/
Felicity
May 14, 2014 at 9:18 pmThanks Jackie but it wasn’t rainbow. The pic was twisted up with brilliant colours and you made it sound like it was a new creation of yours. I will make this rainbow one for now, but any help from your readers too would be great.. You always want what you can’t have !!
happyhooligans
May 14, 2014 at 9:39 pmOh! I know the one you mean. It’s not actually my post. It was one that I shared on my page. Hang on. I’ll find the link.
happyhooligans
May 14, 2014 at 9:43 pmHere it is, Felicity. Enjoy!! http://www.learnplayimagine.com/2014/02/rainbow-slime-recipe.html
Meggin D
May 22, 2014 at 12:56 pmI’m wondering what would happen if I mixed the cornstarch and water with my hand mixer? Mixing it all by hand got my carpal tunnel something fierce! Worth it though!! The kids had so much fun!
Thanks for a great one!
Jodee
June 21, 2014 at 3:32 pmHow do you get it off the sidewalk? I have some that has stained the sidewalk.
happyhooligans
June 21, 2014 at 6:19 pmThe garden hose rinses this right away, Jodee. We’ve done it several times, and never had any staining on our driveway or our bricks.
Lyn delcamp
June 27, 2014 at 9:21 amfor many of your recipes….can you use regular liquid food coloring ?? or must it be the gel kind ? Love all the ideas….I have 2 active boys….keep the ideas coming 🙂
happyhooligans
June 27, 2014 at 4:22 pmYes, you can absolutely use liquid colouring for any of my recipes, Lyn. I just prefer the gels because the colours are so much more intense, and you only need a little bit, so they last forever. I blow through those little bottles of liquid colouring in no time because I find I need to use much more to get intense colouring.
Carol K
August 11, 2014 at 11:57 amI am out of cornstarch. Think I could use cornmeal instead?
happyhooligans
August 11, 2014 at 12:22 pmYou could try, Carol. They’re quite different in texture and composition though so I’m not sure how it will turn out, but if the kids are just up for some messy, colourful fun, I say go for it. Flour might also be something to consider.