I took a quiet moment this morning to make a quick phone call. I knew it would only take about five minutes, but I also knew that five minutes is like two hours in toddler time.
Near the end of the call, Nathan decided to dump the entire ice cream bucket of crayons, markers, and who knows what else on the hall floor. My first thought was, "What a mess." However, it ended up being one of those "teachable moments" we future teachers always heard about in college.
As I was going through the contents and making quite a pile of the tiny, broken crayons, I had a light bulb moment. I remembered a project that I had seen in Family Fun Magazine a couple of years ago. They had used a mini heart shaped muffin tin, but a regular mini muffin tin would work just the same. Yes--I was actually going to complete a project I had read about in a magazine!
I found the simple directions on their website and we proceeded to make new crayons out of the old.
First I preheated the oven to 250 and took the paper off of all the pieces. Nathan and Teresa filled up a mini-muffin tin with the different colors. We broke a few into smaller pieces to help them fit.
We put the tin full of crayon pieces in the oven for about 15 minutes, let them cool, and then put them in the freezer for 5 minutes to help them come out. They tipped right out and we then had 12 new crayons to use.
They are really pretty and the possibilities are endless. If I ever get a mini heart tin, I will probably use Family Fun's original idea and use them for school valentines.
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