Broken Crayons

My little boys love to color. However, they like noise more than they like to color and have discovered the joys of breaking crayons to hear that lovely snapping sound. What am I supposed to do with all of these broken crayons? That certainly was the question to answer since my oldest Samuel refuses to color with a broken crayon. (Also ironic since more than likely he was the one to break the crayon in the first place.) A while back I ran across an idea on Pinterest on what to do with all of those broken crayons, so I decided to make that the project for the day with the kids.

The first step was to get all the paper off of the broken crayons, break them into even smaller pieces and sort the colors.

Look at all of those crayons!

 

I ended up splitting the crayons into two different greased muffin tins.







(Head Crayon Breaker)

 

We preheated the oven to 275 degrees and placed the muffin tins in the oven for approximately 15 minutes to let them melt. Then we stirred the melted crayons with toothpicks to help some of the crayons to further melt.

 

After the muffin tins cooled I placed them in the freezer to harden the newly melted crayons. I left them in there about 2 hours, but it could probably be less time as my littlest took a nap during that time and that had me occupied for a while. The picture below shows how they look when they come out of the freezer. They came right out of the tins without any muss or fuss.

When I turned them over on the countertop some of the colors had an interesting pattern to them, which you could avoid entirely if desired by not mixing colors, but what is the fun in that? The next step was to baggy the crayons for future coloring. These newly made crayons have proven to be tougher than their original counterparts (Praise the Lord!). My little bits have enjoyed coloring with these new crayons that Samuel helped to make. And though Caleb took a little convincing that they were not crackers, both of them are enjoying their broken crayons.