Chalkboard Placemats

A week or so ago, I was doing a painting project. Specifically, the rainbow fan painting project. My son wanted to help, but I didn't think that was such a good idea, so while the rainbow fan dried, he and I worked on a project just for him: Chalkboard Placemats. To view this specific post on The High Heeled Hostess' blog, you will have to scroll through some other posts. It appears the chalkboard placemats post is near the bottom of the page. But, the rest of her blog looks pretty interesting and I think it's worth a gander.

Photo from Pinterest

While we were at the store that day (getting the paint for the rainbow fan), I picked up a cheapy placemat...seriously, I think it was under a $1.00 - score! This is definitely the right time of year for cheap plastic placemats; everybody clearing out their summer stock to make way for fall.

We stirred up the paint, took off my li'l helper's clothes that we didn't want to get paint on, and then went to work. Yes, this is a before picture...that way you can see that my son is occasionally dressed and does like to play with plastic utensils. Um...yeah, don't worry - he didn't jab himself in the throat. He had that long enough for me to take the picture and go "wait a sec! You should give that to me..." Always nice to have evidence of the amazing job we do as parents, right?? Oy.

After all dangerous utensils were removed from the hands of the toddler and he was in nothing but a diaper, we started painting. He enjoyed this for roughly 15 seconds. Thankfully, it didn't take long to complete and, since it was a hot day, it took very little time to dry as well.

This worked wonderfully!! The chalk wrote nicely on the black placemat and my son had a blast doodling...again, for roughly 30 seconds...ok, I should give him a little more credit...it was probably more like 3-5 minutes. Awe, the attention span of a 2 year old. hehe. Oh well. He has come back to it a handful of times and continues to color on it and, although I haven't yet, we can also use it at dinner. I see some creative ways of getting him to sit still at the dinner table with this little gem! In order to clean this, we did need to wipe it down with a wet cloth, but that's no biggie. We'd do that if it was at the table and wasn't drawn on anyway.

I'd definitely say this is a Pinterest win!

Side note: I've had the same chalkboard paint for multiple projects and it lasts a very long time. I'd say it's worth the very small investment if you like to craft-it-up.

Anyway, give it a try with your kiddos...it's definitely a fun little project.