Since the pandemic, I’ve often felt like people who have older children really have it easier than we do. However, now that school is starting again and with so much uncertainty surrounding it, I’ve actually decided I’m so thankful we don’t have any official school-age children yet. Our daughter is in preschool, but she is only 3 and has time to return for her 2021-2022 4-year-old class next year.
Even though she doesn’t need to be doing preschool right now, we’ve decided we can still do some things at home to help her get into a routine since we won’t be going anywhere once the new baby arrives in October. We actually plan to follow a curriculum, I’ll share more on that in another post.
As part of her new home school area, I wanted to include an age-appropriate calendar we can look at together and that will help her learn her days, months, colors, shapes, and more!
We needed a good spot to mount all of these fun things, so I decided that one of our old mirrors was going to be exactly what we needed!
This project was so incredibly easy - here’s how I transformed this mirror we were going to throw away into a useful chalkboard for our circle time calendar!
How to Chalkboard Paint a Mirror
Supplies:
Mirror (I used an old one I had lying around)
Sandpaper or steel wool
Rubbing alcohol
Paper towel
Chalkboard paint made for glass (NOT chalk paint)
Foam paint brush (I used a regular brush because I didn’t have foam, but this is what the can recommended)
How to do it:
1. Prep the glass surface by cleaning it, then roughing it up with sandpaper or steel wool. You don’t have to sand much, just enough to get it a little bit rough for the paint to stick. I promise this didn't sound like nails on a chalkboard!
2. Wipe it down again with rubbing alcohol to make sure the surface is squeaky clean and dust-free for paint.
3. Shake up the paint and pour a little in a cup or tub to dip your brush into. Start painting a thin coat brushing so the paint strokes are all the same direction (side-side OR top-bottom).
4. Give it plenty of time to dry before you start the next coat. I waited several hours after the first coat, then about an hour after the second.
5. Paint the second coat with brush strokes in the opposite direction of what you started. Don’t press too hard or you could scrape up some of the first coat. This happened to me, and I had to sand a few little spots down and paint a third coat.
6. Give it more drying time, then start the third coat using brush strokes the opposite direction of what you did for the second coat. This method of alternating brush stroke direction is supposed to make the surface better for chalk!
7. Let it dry and have plenty of time to cure, then it’s ready to be a chalkboard!
At this stage, you could prime it up for chalk by scribbling chalk all over it and then erasing so it gets that perfect chalkboard texture. I am not going to do that because I plan to use sticky velcro circles to put the circle time calendar together on the surface, and I’m guessing those won’t adhere well to dust.
All in all, this was a super easy project, and I only spent about $10 to make the chalkboard! The circle time calendar was a PDF design I purchased to print and laminate myself - I can’t wait to go through this daily routine with our daughter as we do preschool together at home!
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