crayon melts

with little kids always scribbling, we were starting to accumulate quite a few broken crayon bits and pieces around here and remaking them into muffin shaped composite crayons seems like a fun way of giving them a useful second life. and, well. who doesn't love a little chemistry in the lab!

so, we set right to work sorting out colors. i took the lid to a container and traced circles on a sheet of paper in all the different colors and had a and h scribble away.  then we filled our mini muffin tin with our mixes. and, popped them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 10 minutes. keep your eye on them though. have your children set a timer and record the progress.

picture www.kiddley.com



there you go. mini crayon cookies! next up...creating new names for all your colors. ava had a princess pink cupcake and i am pretty sure that hudson would love to name the one grampa green as he loves to ride in his john deere tractor. but, seriously who gets that job. i think i would like to sign up.
just a few tips:
•use only one brand/kind of crayon. the batch we made of only regular crayolas melted more evenly. washable ones (very hard to melt) and all the freebies from dining establishments, differential melting becomes a problem as some melt to water-like consistency while other are rock hard.

•2-3 highly contrasting colors gave the best scribble. the all-shades-of-blue cookie looked great, but was a little underwhelming when it came to performance testing.


•3 full crayons are about all that you'll want in a mini-muffin tin. it looks like it will hold more, but you don't want them coming over the edge and spilling in your oven. use a pan underneath while the Cookies are in the oven.


if you try this yourself, i would love to see your rainbow of colors and hear the interesting names they are given.