Crayon Stars
I’ve been coming up with little projects to do with my youngest whilst Big Sister is at Kindy.
stubby crayons - time for a new look
I’ve been meaning to try out melting left-over crayons into new shapes for a while now. We finally gave it a go. I quickly browsed the net for ‘recipies’ but it appears a bit hit and miss. So I started with good ol Martha and went from there.
score the wrapper
A few people on the net suggested using a stanley to score the crayons to get the wrappers off… good tip. My good tip is then give it to one with itty bitty fingers and let her go to town.
little fingers unwrap crayons well
Once you’ve got all the crayons unwrapped break them into small pieces and then use them as a colour sort activity. We had a heap of fun with this part!
a great tool for teaching colour theory
then put your crayon bits into a container. I just used an old ikea ice tray.
Pretty sure you cant do this more than a few times with the same tray, and I’d be real careful, but it worked for us. I threw it out after (I think they only cost $1.)
You can group your colours together or mix them up. Some of my favourites were the ones where we blended complimentary colours.
place broken crayons in container
I then placed it on a baking tray lined with baking paper, just in case it all went pear shaped! Then it went in the oven.
wait patiently...
Don’t worry, our oven is cool touch. Martha suggests 10-15minutes at 150C but I found that 5minutes melted them just fine. (I was being really careful not to over heat the ice cube tray too.)
melted crayon
melted crayon is all glossy and almost clear looking. Allow it to cool to opaque. I also put ours in the freezer for about 20minutes, I read it helped pop them out. Now this is the part where I tell you the stars work quite well but I think a more solid shape, like a heart, would be easier to pop out. Some of the points on a few of the stars cracked off as they were quite difficult to pop out. Still we got some great stars with interesting colours and fun new crayons to draw with. Here are a couple of my favourites:
star wars star!
Doesn’t this make you think of space? You could make them as party gifts for a star-wars party!
motley
I’m always a fan of anything with a bit of yellow!
pretty blue
You can see this was one of the ones where a point got cracked off. It was so pretty though.
And for the ultimate test….
They draw great!
wait for big sister to come home and surprise her with a fun present, then get drawing!
sweet 