Instructions for making homemade crayons out of old crayons

The children at Guardian Freshwater have been busy recycling and reusing their tiny pieces of crayon to create brand new ones!

The left over odds and ends were placed into love heart shaped cookie tins, and melted in a mild oven, then placed in the freezer to set. At the end, the children had created new rainbow crayons. What a great way to learn about recycling, and how we can use science to turn something old into something new.

The end product then gave the children the chance to create something else new – a beautiful artwork using their hand made crayons. Ad more than that, this activity incorporated many different opportunities for learning along the way…

• Small finger and hand muscles were further developed as children peeled the crayons, snapped them, laid them side-by-side to ‘fit’ them in the trays.
• Opportunities were provided to sort and categorise – by length, by colour, by shade, peeled and not yet peeled etc.
• There was work done by individuals as well as opportunities for teamwork.
• Scientific learning occurred throughout the experience as the children discussed, hypothesised and observed the changes to the crayons as they were heated, melted and then cooled to create a different solid and a new product to be used and enjoyed.
• Conversations and hands on learning supported language, literacy and numeracy learning as children were introduced to new words or concepts and were encouraged to describe their actions or discoveries. E.g how crayons fit or did not, discussions of original colour names and shades and of new colours developed, as well as descriptions and comparisons of length and of size etc.

If you would like to make your own Crazy Crayons at home, we’ve attached the instructions below. It’s a great rain-day or lockdown activity for children of all ages.

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