Do you want to impress your kids friends and teachers? Valentine’s day is quickly approaching and my creative thoughts have been all over the place. I want my kids to hand out Valentine’s that aren’t just plain cards that you buy at the store. I want them to hand out something that will wow their classmates. My thoughts went back to my preschool classroom, shaped crayons were all the rage! My eight and five-year-olds both agree they would like them for their classes. Perfect, cheap and adorable, the perfect combination! Teachers will love you for sending fun crayons the kids can use instead of more sugar that is going to have them bouncing off the walls by the end of the day.
I look around and have a container of broken crayons…what a great way to use them! So I run to the dollar store and find some silicon ice cube trays in heart shapes. PERFECT! So here is how you make them:
- Silicon baking pan or ice cube trays ( I always find shaped ice cube trays at the dollar store around each holiday )
- Crayons (lots and lots, can be new, broken, whatever you have around)
- Xacto knife (optional, but makes removing wrappers much easier!)
- Oven
- Cookie sheet or something else to cook your silicon baking ware on
- After you have gathered all of the supplies, use your Xacto knife to cut a slit down each crayon’s wrapper. You will be able to easily remove the wrapper at this point. If you don’t have an Xacto knife, try to enlist a few small pairs of hands to tear the wrappers.
Now break the crayons into small pieces. This is easily done by small hands you might have around the house. The smaller you break the crayons, the easier they will melt. This is easy to do just by getting into the bottom of your crayon container, there always seems to be a bunch of broken crayons at the bottom.
Fill your tray with broken crayon pieces. Try to fill it as much as possible without any hanging out, when these melt you will have a mess if crayon bits are hanging out. I like to use a lot of different colors in each of mine, but you can also do each heart a single color.
Place your filled tray on your cookie sheet or pan and place in an oven at 250 degrees. Keep an eye on them, they will turn glossy then begin to melt together.
- Keep crayons in oven until they are all melted and begin to look like the above. Carefully remove from the oven. If you are using multiple colors like I did, you want to move them as little as possible so the colors don’t blend into one. I used a number of different brands of crayons, some of which melt quicker than others.
- Allow to cool and then pop them out of the tray. I normally let mine sit overnight, just to ensure they are hardened up well. This is where you see why I say to use a silicon tray. I have tried a normal muffin tin, although they were cute and easy for little hands to color with, they were a pain to remove from the tin. I have used disposable aluminum baking tins as well, these did not give a pretty smooth appearance that the silicon gives.
These shaped crayons are fun for any time of the year. I have made flowers, stars, circles and now hearts. When I put the tub of crayons out, guess which ones are the first that little hands go for? Of course, the fun shapes are more fun than a normal crayon!
