Clare has been at me to make her some new crayons from old broken ones after seeing (and buying) some recycled crayons at Made’n’Thornbury last weekend.  There are loads of tutorials on the net explaining how to do this – I used this one and this one as a guide, so I’m not claiming to be doing anything original.  Here’s our version:

Peel the paper off the bits of old broken crayon, and place the crayon pieces  into an old muffin tin.  Clare chose to keep her crayons in colour groupings, but you could really go to town with how you combine them.

I pre-heated the oven to 150 degrees C, and placed the tin into it.  Melting crayons smell a lot like melting candles.  We kept a fairly close eye on them and I think it only took around 10 minutes for them to look like this.

We’d missed taking the paper wrapping off one of the yellow crayons – you can see it in the photo, unmelted.  After letting the tray cool down for about 10 minutes I popped it in the freezer.  And when it was nice and cold and the crayons were completey hard Clare levered them out of the tin.

They’re nice and chunky and she’s really enjoyed seeing what effects she can get colouring with these.  Stella has enjoyed them too.

To finish the fun for the day the girls got their hands into some goop made from cornflour, water and food colouring (there are lots of recipes for this on the net too – try here or here or here or here).

I’d never played with goop before (shame on me, former science teacher!) and it was loads of fun.  I highly recommend it!