I've got a plan! The lower deck (partially shown here) will be marked off and painted as a 12' chess/checker board, I know where to get a bunch of appropriately sized flower pots (cheap!) which will be painted predominately black or red but with whatever a kid's intuition wants to do with it. May need to trim the lip of the pot with duct tape (note to self, look for colored tape) in order to cushion the 'checkers' as they move around the concrete board. The drainage hole will be used as a finger grip to pick up and move the 'men'.Later, the checkers can be used as pawns and I'll find larger pots to paint up as appropriate chess pieces. (Any creative ideas appreciated!)
The chess board will take up less than half of the available space, so I found a gridded labyrinth design (simplified) and will save that for another time... maybe later this summer. Would be fun to read and study on the history (kid's view) of labyrinths while we paint it.Also found a bunch of nearly new straw hats at the local Thrift Store (a favorite place to shop for surprise finds) so that's something else the kids can paint. Maybe we'll have an Easter Parade ;-)
4 comments:
The clay pots don't hold up well.
We switched to salvaged 4"x3"x9" yellow paving bricks painted red & black with Krylon acrylic. The grid itself was in the driveway - more Krylon, gray & gold, masked off with tape. The whole set lasted years. As checkers fell off and they kids learned chess, they added simple symbols to the bricks with markers.
Not very creative but functional.
I love this photograph with the grey/green stripes of the trees and then on the ground.
Sounds like a great find, Deb. But also kind of heavy. The idea of decoratively painting the pots means craft time with the kids more than anything else. I did pick up some colorful duct tape that should help prevent chips on the rims, maybe even hold them together a bit longer.
Hadn't even noticed the variety of stripes in that photo until you mentioned it, Olga. The ones on the concrete are due to rain falling through the above deck. We tend to get lots of black mold in shady areas here so on J's to-do list is to pressure wash the area before we grid and paint it.
Oh what fun! Can I come play too?
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