My kids had dumped out their crayon drawer and holy broken crayons. Almost everyone of them was broken. Totally looking like a mess! So together we cleaned up and placed all the broken ones in a ziplock bag. At first I had no idea what I was going to do…then I thought about recycling them and the kids could help!
Super fun and easy for the kids to help with!
Gather all of your broken crayons…
Have the kids unwrap all of the crayons. I made my kids put the paper wrappers in a plastic grocery bag so I could easily throw it away. So, wrappers in a grocery bag and crayons in a bowl.
Cut the top of a soda can off and cut up the crayons to small pieces then place like colors together inside of the can. (I used a knife to cut the top off). If you cut up the crayons to small pieces they melt a lot faster and better.
Take your glass bowl (I used a measuring cup) and put about 1 cup of water in it and heat up the water in the microwave for 2 minutes til slightly boiling.
Lay out your wax paper…
Then place the can with the crayons in it in the water so the crayons start melting together on the wax paper..
Use your plastic spoon to mix until fully melted.
Once melted pour into your molds and place in the freezer for a few minuted until they harden completely.
Then take the mold out of the freezer and pop them right out!
SIDE NOTE:
I tried melting the crayons in the molds in the microwave but it was taking forever so thats how I came up with what I did!
The kids had so much fun creating new colors. This is also a great science experiment to see what mixing colors is like.
Totally eco-friendly recycled crayons that the kids will love!
This is even great for neighbor kids!
I’m really anxious to try some candy molds and maybe get my son’s classroom to donate their broken crayons so I can recycle them for them into some fun shapes!
-Teryn