my step daughter and i made homemade crayons out of old crayons.
we peeled the crayons first, which did take awhile. then we broke them in small pieces and decided which colors would look nice together.
i bought a mini muffin pan (metal) and filled each hole with crayon bits. then we melted them in a toaster oven, waited for them to cool, and popped them out of the toaster oven.
they are fun to use because they show many colors in just one stroke. they are a disc shape, but even my 6th graders wanted to make them when i took them to school.
I know people who melt the little crayon stubs together to make a crayon "brick". I've never done it, but I bet there are directions online. (Or from one of our many helpful and creative PTers!)
They have these type of crayons at a local kids play place here and my son *loves* to use them because he can make really cool multi-colored artwork.
They would be fun to put in a word work or spelling station...
I have made the melted crayons mentioned already, but I have also made them with rubber ice cube trays in shapes such as hearts. To do this you need to carefully melt them in a microwave, or just melt the crayons altogether by color in another container and pour into the rubber molds.
I have done art projects where you decorate them with crayon shavings. Either they kids can just sprinkle them on, or you can put them on then cover with wax paper and iron to melt them. Very neat looking.
For the past couple of years, I ask my kids if they have any school supplies that they want to donate (or not take home) on the last day of school. Surprisingly, most kids don't want to pack up their half box of crayons or glue and dump them in the bucket. Then I have that bucket as "community supplies" for kids who don't have their supplies. It makes it easier than getting aggravated at anybody for not having crayons.
crayons are petroleum products and should not be thrown away!
You can send your unwanted crayons to them and they will melt them down and create new crayons from the old bits and call them Crazy Crayons. You can send your unwanted crayons for crayon recycling to:
Melt them by color in metal muffin tins, and keep the muffin tin warm on a hot plate, then let the kids dip Q-tips into the wax and make "paintings" on a piece of cardboard. My 5th grade teacher let us do this and I thought it was so cool! Of course, you'll have to be right there supervising!
I always give mine to the building art teachers. In my building they don't receive school supplies like we do from the kids. The art teachers are very appreciative.
Melt the crayons in the muffin tins or in plastic containers in the microwave. Then pour them into candy molds. I make cute shapes such as animals and stars. I use these as small rewards. For example, if everyone has their homework or they follow directions well. Don't reuse the candy molds for candy, though.
This list is perfect. At the end of last year, I had my kids pull out all the broken crayons from our community supply. The packrat in me couldn't bear to throw them away but I had no idea what to do with them. Now I have a ton of ideas!!! Thank you everyone!!!
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07-07-2008, 05:58 PM
They would be fun to put in a word work or spelling station...
