With a long weekend coming up for many, I wanted to share a fun family activity that you can do with your children over the next few days to make the most of the time you have together. What’s great about this craft is that it uses up all those little crayon pieces that you have leftover to form new, fun crayons. After you are done making the crayons you can color pictures and draw with the colorful crayons.
These DIY crayons are easy to make and can be formed into many different shapes. Other than the crayons and your oven, you’ll need a silicone baking mold in the shapes that you want. I bought one with half a dozen hearts for less than $5 at a craft store. You could even use a plain old metal cupcake pan if you prefer to make round disc crayons.
Directions:
(Please note: All tasks relating to the oven/melted crayons are meant for adults to do. Kids can help peel wrappers and break the crayons into pieces and they’ll also really enjoy the end result and coloring with their new crayons!)
- Heat oven to 200 degrees
- Peel crayon wrappers off crayons
- Break crayons into 4-5 pieces each
- Put crayon pieces in silicone baking molds, filling the molds about halfway. You can mix the colors up for “rainbow” crayons or choose to put shades of like colors together
- Put the silicone baking mold in the oven for 15-20 minutes, checking every minute or so after the 15 minute mark. My crayons cooked for 19 minutes.
- Carefully remove your baking mold from the oven, being careful not to spill the melted crayons
- Let the mold sit on the counter for about 30 minutes or until the melted crayons have somewhat hardened, then put it in the freezer for 30 minutes or so to complete the process
- Pop the new crayons out from the silicone molds carefully
Once the crayons are ready it’s time for the best part- coloring together! We like to enjoy a snack like Goldfish crackers while we color. The boys like to draw their favorite characters while mommy (who is very Type-A) prefers coloring in the lines of a coloring book.
Looking for another fun activity to do? How about making a stop-motion video? Create your video and enter it in the Goldfish Tales Animation Xperience and you could win $5,000!
What fun activities will your family be doing this weekend?
The heart shaped crayons are super cute! Great Valentine’s day gift.
That turned out so great! Wonder if my wife would scream at me if I used her silicon cupcake molds to do something similar…
What a creative way to make your own crayons, love the idea of making crayons. I don’t have younger kids, but would enjoy seeing what shapes I could create using on hand items!
These are so cute. They would be great to make for classroom valentine gifts. I’ll have to get me some molds.
I think that’s so cute! I should do this with my daughter. She’d have so much fun picking out the colors to melt.