Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Color your World...

Crayons: What do you do with those small, insignificant, broken pieces of crayons that no one wants to color with anymore? You make NEW crayons!! My kids LOVED this activity! I will say it is not my favorite, I am sure there are easier ways out there to do it, so be creative. I would do it again though because I think the idea is great and the outcome is a lot of fun. It did provide us with hours of entertainment.

First: Gather up all your broken crayons

Second: Peel off all the paper from the crayons (this is the most time consuming part, a little bit hard for little ones, so mom & dad, prepare yourself to do it)

Third:
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Fill greased muffin tins full of pieces of crayons. You can either put all the same color together or mix colors, if you plan on using the mixed colors in molds remember it will all look brown. If you decide to keep them in the tin, it will provide a circular, swirled crayon. Bake in the oven for 5-10 min until crayons are completely melted.


Finally: Get your molds ready. I used my candy molds. I did not grease them and they just fell out when they were ready. Carefully spoon in hot melted crayons into molds, this is where I will be more creative next time, it was a mess the way I did it, I have seen it done with pot pie tins too & that looks a lot easier. I will use those next time. You may need to continue to heat muffin tins as the crayons will begin to solidify the longer they are out. After you fill your molds, place them in the freezer for 20-30min until they are cold and hard. Then dump out carefully and enjoy!

Ta da! Not the best picture, but these are a few of the dozens we created. We did flowers, numbers, presents, feet and clovers. They turned out really well.

I would do this all again (just a little cleaner & more creative) because the girls just LOVED it!! They had a ball coloring with their different shapes as well as playing with them. They played with them just like they do their everyday toys.

3 comments:

dana said...

how fun! I've wanted to do stuff like this for a while. Cute to put them in molds like that!

Jennifer said...

I did this awhile back too. It's a great way to use those crayons - but you're right -- very time consuming!

~ Jennifer
http://thetoyboxyears.blogspot.com/

heather said...

Just for the record don't try and use the plastic baking molds the wax will not come off of them, i made hearts at valentines day this way... they are cute but my mold is no more. I think I'll try your way next time!