Homemade Crayons

For “C” week at preschool, we made these with our Kindergarten Preparation class.

First, find all of those old crayons you having lying around the house.  Have your child peel off the wrappers of the crayons, and break them into smaller pieces.  Next, you have options.  To make these in the oven, you can use a regular muffin tin;  that’s what I use, and haven’t had trouble getting the crayons out, but you may not want to use a nice muffin tin.  You can also use a disposable one.  Have your child place the crayons in the muffin tin, about half way up.  They can mix the colors, or sort them, whatever you prefer.  Place in the oven for 5-10 minutes at about 275 degrees.  You may want to adjust this temperature depending on your oven.  Let cool, pop out, and color!

You can also do this in the microwave.  I used to do this for our dinosaur unit and use dinosaur candy molds to make dinosaur shaped crayons.  Just make sure not to use the metallic crayons; I sent many sparks aflying in my microwave doing this!  Peel, break, and distribute crayons to plastic candy molds.  The pieces will melt better if they are smaller.    Start melting the crayons at 10 second intervals.  You can play with the time depending on your microwave.  If you want, you can take a popsicle stick, and stir the crayons to help with the melting process.  After fully melted, cool, pop out, and color!  These also make good favors for birthday parties and Valentine’s day, (use heart molds.)  I have even seen some people turn these into necklaces, which I tried, but had a hard time getting the hole to stay in the crayon.

This project brings back memories of placing crayons on the radiators in my elementary school.  It was so fun to see the process of the crayon slowly melt, and then to carry around the melted crayon to show everyone. 🙂  I truly hope this is a fun project for you and your child.  Happy melting & coloring!