DIY Funky Crayons (Project)

My little guy loves to color, and to encourage his creative flow, I am often picking up different colors of crayons for him to use and enjoy. As a toddler, he really hasn't quite grasped the concept of 'please don't break the crayons on purpose' yet. As a result, we end up with lots of tiny broken crayon pieces, which if I don't keep an eye on, wind up in all sorts of places through out our home.

Fed up with the little crayon bits, but not wanting to waste the wax, I committed myself to finding a way to recycle the crayon pieces. I have seen those nifty contraptions that will take your old crayons and combine the colors, and turn them into brand spanking new crayons, but I'm not going to do that, just to have them broken into bits again.

So, I got the clever idea to grab one of our silicone ice cube trays, and try to make some funky crayons out of the broken crayon pieces.

3-4 small crayon pieces in each mold

It turned out that this was a great project for Balian and I to do together. I peeled the paper off of the leftover crayon pieces, and he filled the ice cube tray with a few pieces of broken crayons in each mold. He got a big kick out of that, and breaking some of the larger pieces into smaller ones to better fit into the mold.

Out of the oven, and cooled...

After the triangles were all filled up with the crayon pieces, I preheated the oven to 175 degrees. I placed the ice cube tray on a cookie sheet, and placed it in the warm oven for about forty-five minutes, so the crayon pieces melted down.

After that, I tool the tray out of the oven, and set it aside so it could begin to cool. One the tray cooled off, I placed it into the freezer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, I poppped the crayons right out of the tray, and voila- we had fun, new crayons!

We wound up with ten new crayons...

The triangle shapes are much easier for little hands to grasp, and much harder to break than traditional crayons (even the chubby ones, which still wind up broken at our house!).

We have other trays with star and heart shapes, and I may just look for other shapes, too! This was a lot of fun, a toddler-friendly project, and it was a great way to recycle broken crayons!

Try it with the kiddos this week and see what you think!