I am so excited to share this post with you all! My boys and I worked on this fun project a few days ago and it was a hit! It’s a super easy thing to do with littles and a GREAT way to git rid of all those 1/2 used/broken crayons!
We will be using these as valentines gifts for our cousins (don’t tell sisters!) this year! Surf and Turf had a blast helping and picking out which one to give to each of their 9 cousins!
So, here you go…
You will need:
- old crayons (Crayola brand are the most pigmented and tend to work best)
- silicon molds (I used these, but there are lots of cute options …like these fun emoji ones!)
- paper plates
- knife (not super sharp – for cutting off wrapping)
- oven
- cookie sheet
- parchment paper (optional)
- 2 toddlers (optional – but super helpful!)
Ok, so a few things to note. This can get messy. Crayon shavings WILL get everywhere. Don’t do this over a carpeted space!
Okay, now that you have your supplies to gather, begin by using the knife to slice down the wrapper of each of your crayons. Once you have a few full plates, hand that to your toddlers and watch the magic happen. These eager helpers will save you time by unwrapping each one for quite a while…I mean we could be even talking delightfully busy for over 30 min! (Depending on your back stash of crayons.)
I usually gave them an empty plate to put the wrappers on and told them to put their unwrapped ones back on their crayon plate. It made clean up way easier. We tried doing this without cutting the wrappers first and they quickly lost interest because it was “too hard mom!”, so this method really saved time and sanity for all of us.
While they are working on that I prep our molds. I cover my cookie sheet in parchment paper (I actually will get a few uses out of this and will just store it with my molds). Then I place the molds in the center of the cookie sheet. The parchment paper will catch any of the crayon shavings that don’t make it in, and protect my cookie sheet!
Once the boys had unwrapped a few, I would grab them and use the knife to chop up the crayons into smaller pieces while they still worked. Once everything was done and chopped, they helped me fill each of the molds. Be sure to OVER fill them, they will melt down and take up 1/2 the space! During this, I’m also pre-heating my oven to 225°.
Once your molds are filled and oven preheated, place them in the center of the oven. For my oven they need between 15-18 minutes. I would set a timer for 15 min and start watching them. Once you don’t see any more lumps, pull them out.
The hard part is done! We were a bit antsy and didn’t let them cool fully and paid for it with a few of our guys, so make sure to let them cool all the way. If you live in MI, just throw the trays outside!
LOOK! HOW CUTE! Our little guys love coloring an entire piece of paper with these. The variety in color makes it super fun for them!
All that coloring done with 1 crayon! Each one makes such fun color combos! You never know what you are going to get.
Well, have fun, stay warm, and enjoy your new set of crayons!
