Easter Egg Sidewalk Chalk

For years, I've wanted to do this project, but the whole idea of plaster sidewalk chalk kind of gave me the heebie jeebies.  Plaster, I thought, would make for the nasty HARD chalk that scrapes on the sidewalk and doesn't make that satisfying soft dust that kids like so much.  But I digress...Easter time rolled around and I wanted to do something special for Kayci and her friends, so I arranged a time to go into her classroom to do a craft.  And I picked, of course, the chalk eggs.  

I've been here before, where I pick a craft from cyberspace and just can't quite get it to work out, so I thought I'd be smart.  2 days before, I started working with the recipe to figure out how to go from making a bajillion at once to just one egg-size amount that each child could mix up individually.  Sadly, not one of my test eggs came out.  You'd think I'd just pick another craft, but no...I'd told Bitty so she was married to the egg.  And so I soldiered on...and by the 6th or so test egg, I'd gotten the mix down and perfected everything but the bubble--the plaster had an annoying tendency to create an air bubble at one end, which meant that it comes out more like 3/4 egg than a whole, beautiful chalk egg like Crayola makes.  I figured I could live with that, so I took my toys and headed off to Kayci's school.  

The kids enjoyed the process of stirring and adding color...we did the scooping and pouring because of the plaster dust.  I wasn't sure how they were going to turn out, but today at the Easter egg hunt we got the chalk out and all of my fears were laid to rest...

I have to say, I was disappointed with the project until I saw how much the kids loved it, today, and how well the chalk worked! Not dry and icky at all, but kind of creamy and just right...

EVERYONE loved the sidewalk chalk...

...and yes, maybe there was just a little monkeyin' around.