I bribed the kids to clean the house today by telling them I had a fun craft we could do together. They did a great job, so this is how we spent our afternoon.
I found this craft on a website months ago and I forgot about it until I noticed all the broken and short crayons in our crayon bucket. I tried to find the website so I could credit it. I didn’t find the same one, but there are many others out there with the same idea.
First collect all the broken, small, or paperless crayons you can find.
Then peel the paper off of those that need it. This was the most time consuming part, and probably the thing the kids had the most fun with.
Then let the kids have fun snapping the crayons into pieces. You may have to do like I did and cut the ones that are harder to break.
Heat your oven to 300 degrees and then turn it off.
Then pick 2–3 contrasting colors and put them in each of the cups in a muffin tin, or mini muffin tins, like we used. When we got to the last few cups the kids just grabbed handfuls of colors because they wanted some crazy crayons. We could have filled our cups fuller, but I was worried about them spilling over.
Put the trays in the oven and watch and wait. I didn’t watch the time, but it took between 10–15 minutes for our crayons to melt. Carefully take the tray out of the oven and let it sit until the crayons are partially set up. It only takes a few minutes.
Then pop it in the freezer for twenty minutes or so.
The crayon cookies should pop right out of the trays when they are hard.
This is what we ended up with.
Ours were a little fragile because I didn’t make them thick enough, but if you fill your muffin tins full they should be much more durable.
Then color away!
I think this project was as much fun for me as it was for them. We will definitely be saving up our broken crayons so we can do this again.
Technorati Tags: kids crafts,crayons,family activities,crafts
Whims 