Let’s play with… Chalk!

I used to love playing with chalk when I was a kid. There was always some kind of chalk lying around the house back then. My mum used to sew all sorts of stuff. Clothes for my sisters when they were kids, mend her clothes, mend my clothes, make flags, etc. In her sewing kit you will always find triangular chalk meant for marking fabrics. I also made sure I had a nice supply of the white chalk my primary school teachers love to throw at us. I bought the chalks lah, not collected them from being thrown at lah. I was a good girl you know? Naturally, these all became my childhood toys much to their dismay. I drew everywhere and that was how I learnt tailor chalk on mosaic tiles is not easy to wipe off, must scrub. Hard. When my mum needs to burn incense papers during religious occasions, my job was to draw a huge circle around the incense burner or ground to indicate the area we were about to use. I loved my job. Very important to a 6 year old ok?

While catching up on my list of favourite local blogs, I came across one of The Gingerbread Mum’s post about one of her kids’ favourite activity. I never knew Singaporeans can be so yim jim (particular) and boh liao (too free and got nothing better to do). So free until someone used their lousy camera, zoomed in dunnohowmany times to take picture of a suspicious looking family who were having insanely dangerous fun with *gasp* a whole bag of CHALK! Gilah fella said they nair respect the residents and should respect Singapore laws? You angry they nair ask you to join them ah? You is the what I call “eat full nothing to do”. I was totally inspired by it and decided I was going to get us some chalk to commit some criminal acts that weekend too! *rubs hands in with evil glee* Mwahahaha!

I sumpah (swear) that I wasn’t planning to use our friend’s baby’s full month party as the crime scene. It just happened and seemed like a good idea at the time. Initially the three of us weren’t very sure what to do. The 2 adults haven’t touched chalk in years and the little one had never even played with one before. He was wondering why mummy so giam siap (stingy) bought so few colors. “Why no red, no black Mummy?” he asked. I said “Neh! Got pink! Chalk got no red lah. Black is charcoal already, I’ll get that for you another day. Chalk only comes in these few colors lah.” The lies just keeps growing. Note to self: steer him away from art supplies shops where they have rainbow colored artist chalk for sale. No need to be forever, 10 years can already.

I’ll be honest with you. We were very worried to kenah Stomped like that poor criminal family so I packed 2 big bottles of water along so we can wash off the evidence when we were done. Xan was only interested to get the attention of the other children to come play with him. At first it was just us 3, then 4, then 6, then a parent joined us. Boy was I glad it didn’t backfire in my face that day. It got messy real quick too. Hands, arms, pants, skirts, shoes, none of the kids stayed clean for long. A few were shocked to see their hands so dirty and got a bit worried. We had to remind them we had water and the powder can be washed off very easily. See? These kids are also concerned with cleanliness hor? After a while when they saw everyone else were just as messy, they giggled and continued with their masterpieces. While they disappeared midway to finish their lunch, rain came and washed off most of the artwork. That didn’t stop the children, they asked me if they could continue inside the multipurpose hall. The kids had a lot of fun and like Xan, some of them have never even touched chalk before that day. Amazing!

Who would’ve thought chalk could bring so much joy to a group of kids who hardly knew each other? Why would anyone have so much problem with it is beyond my understanding. It is temporary, washable, doesn’t harm anybody’s health. Why so serious lah? I know some of the parents were concerned that their kids were sitting on the floor and getting real dirty by the second but by some strange force, none came to yank the kids away.

We had a lot of fun that day with the kids and plan to do it again soon. Would you like to do the same with your kids too? Or you think it’s too messy and random to amount to anything useful?