Multi-Coloured Crayon Activity

DIY Multi-Colour Crayons

My Little Mr. A loves colouring in. He gets all sort of colour in things from his Granny and Nanna, but of course the little crayons snap, get lost and smooshed into the carpet. They are always under my couch, ALWAYS!! I had a smart idea to collect all the dud crayons and melt them together and TA-DAH!!! Multi Coloured Crayons!!! 

Its also a perfect dad-proof activity. Make your own Army Camo Print Crayons - Mr Dad loved this name!

Little Mr. A also has a new obsession with the Trash Packs, the picture behind can be downloaded from their website .

Target Areas and Skills Used:

• Fine Motor Skills
• Finger and Hand strength and endurance
• Colour Matching
• Counting

First, collect all the dud crayons. I also did another packet that we had lying around the house, it was mostly browns and orange, but it worked.

Extra crayons

I got Little Mr. A to take the paper off. Its great for finger strength and fine motor skills in preparation for writing before he starts kindy next year. Im going to try to incorporate AS MANY fine motor activities into his day as possible so he might like writing at school. So much of the time kids don't like writing because their hands fatigue and get sore. This is a great way to trick him into using his fingers! This cheap brand of crayons the paper was a bit tricky to take off, so i used my nail to take a strip of paper off and Little Mr. A was able to take the paper off easier. We used about 40 crayons, half were broken. 

Scratch a strip of paper off to make it easier for kids to un-wrap

We used a silicon mould. There are nice shaped ice moulds that would work nice too, my mum has a long thin silicon ice mould which would be perfect. I find the moulds very flimsy so i put it ontop of a baking tray. I told Little Mr. A that we could have 3 colours in each mould. He also had to snap up the crayons into smaller pieces to put into the moulds.

Choosing which 3 colours will look nice together

 I baked the crayons for about 30min at 75 degrees, the coolest setting in my oven. I didn't want to chance burnt crayon smell in my house! Little Mr. A is starting to learn the time so every 5 min had to check on the crayons, so if you keep the oven shut it should take alot less time.

Crayons looking a little gross, melted but retaining their shape.  I jiggled them around a bit and poked the sticking up ones with a skewer. 

Crayons fresh out of the oven. The underside is the nice side!

Mmmm.....fresh crayons straight out of the oven!

And yes, as Little Mr. A pointed out, we have army print brown and army print green crayons!

"Look mum, army print!"

Little Mr A couldn't wait to try them out

All of our crayons. These would make great ideas for party bags, get the birthday boy (or girl) to do this with dad (come on, this has got to be dad proof right??) while you rush around like a mad man before the party!