Baked crayons.
I stumbled upon Mrs. Suzie Homemaker (which I am soooo not) and her post on Recycle broken crayons. I glanced over at the preschooler coloring with his bin of broken crayons and thought “lets do this!”. It only took a few minutes to do and he was in heaven the whole time. I wish I could share the joy upon his face when he heard the oven time buzz. LOL It was like Christmas morning.
First we had to peel the paper off the old crayons, which ended up being my job. Sure it seems easy, but when you are like me and keep your finger nails short it can be tricky on some of the pieces. My oldest carefully examined the empty cups of the old muffin tin, being very picky about what colors he wanted to go together and in what order in the tins. It was a delicate work of art to say the least.
After baking for 5 minutes at 300* F we pulled them out of the oven and examined the liquid crayons. We talked about how the oven melted them what we thought would happen when we put them in the freezer. My son described them as “paint crayons”. Maybe next time we’ll get some old paintbrushes and see if we can paint with the liquid wax and what will happen. Then I put the muffin tin in the freezer and set the time to 10 minutes. Once the timer buzzed my son began his dance of joy around the living room while I pulled them out. They were a bit hard to get out of the cups. A couple slipped out just fine, but the rest took a bit of effort. I tried tapping around the bottoms and sides with the handle of a butter knife. That popped a couple out and broke one into three pieces. But there were still six remaining. After trying to freeze them longer and a bit more banging I finally just held the pan upside down and dropped it on the kitchen floor. They all popped out.
Homeschool arts and crafts time, with a little science thrown in for good measure. And it was fun, that’s the best part.
homeschool, homeschooling, crafts, fun, crayons
May 14th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Sounds like fun!
Thanks for the Make it From Scratch entry!