Melted crayons activities

Melting crayons is a great way to recycle small broken pieces at the bottom of the craft box, but do kids really use them for coloring? In my experience, not for long. Would love to hear if your experiences are different!

Since our melted crayons just sit around and get dusty, I was not so thrilled when my daughter suggested to melt some more. But what else were we to do with the little pieces?

After melting the crayons this time, here's some activities and uses we came up with to do with the little circles.

• building blocks
• doll furniture
• paper wieghts
• door hangers
• necklaces
• dinosaur stepping stones

We used an old plastic knife with a rounded cutting edge to whittle the melted crayons into shapes. The heart above was made this way. We used toothpicks to carve designs in the melted crayon circles and shapes.

I used a safety pin to poke a hole in the top of the crayon circles to thread yarn through to make the necklaces and door hangers.

So now I enjoy our little melted crayon circles, I mean, they are pretty and usable.

Here's how we melted the crayons.

1. We put them in cupcake baking pans. (I only use this pan for crafts and not food anymore.)

2. Put in a 200 degree over for 10 minutes. ( I did not preheat the oven.)

3. I took them out of the oven after 10 minutes even though some of the crayons were not completely melted. They were melted on the bottom, and I didn't want to over cook the other crayons.

4. I let them cool for about 20 minutes. When they are cool, them come loose from the sides of the pan almost by themselves. Just try to twirl them around a little.

6. After they are cool, they should come out of the pan pretty easily. The underneath is shiny.