Larkspur likes to have one cotton swap per color and she lines them up just so.
Gabriel on the other hand is more efficient using both ends of his for separate colors.
“Treasure Box with Treasure”by: Seth
The curriculum I am using for the boys this year is Mother of Divine Grace and in Seth’s lesson plans, Friday is craft day (maybe it’s every other Friday….)I am terrible at setting up organized crafts of any kind. Unless I plan ahead, crafts don’t really happen. That doesn’t mean that art doesn’t happen at my house, it is just more basic and along the lines of colored pencil drawings and watercolors. So I am going to try to be disciplined and plan for a craft on Fridays (or every other…gotta check that. if it’s not on the lesson plan I can’t do it. mental thing. must follow lesson plan or won’t do school at all)
Yesterday’s craft took it’s inspiration from a project in Discovering Great Artists. I skipped all the educational stuff and didn’t try to get my kids to use melted crayon wax to paint a still life. I just involved them in all the crayon paper peeling action the night before (which they really enjoyed) and the set up the next morning. After all the supplies were in place, they painted whatever they wanted without my input.
Here’s what we did: I lined an old muffin tin (you won’t be able to use the tin for cooking again) that I had to recover from Larkspur’s mud pie table with those foil muffin liners. Although we won’t be using that tin for muffins again, I did want clean up to be easy-after the fact I realized that using the liners means you can let the crayon harden again and save it to use later. We put broken crayons in color families in the liners. I baked at 200 until the crayons were melted. Then I placed the tin on a warm plug in skillet lined with tin foil (you know those long ones that you make grilled cheese or pancakes on) and just monitored the temp. If it’s too hot the wax smokes, and if it is too cool, the wax hardens. The wax will cool really quickly if you don’t keep it warm during the project. The book calls for a warming plate. Paintbrushes would have been ruined by the wax, so we used cotton swabs for brushes and the kids painted on cardstock. My kids loved this. We will definitely do it again. What a fun way to use some of the broken crayons in our crayon drawer! And if you like to take pictures, it’s totally worth it just to take a colorful shot of all the crayons in their liners!
One last thing: because of the hot factor, this is better for kids four and up I would say-but every kid is different. Lark is only three and she had no problem with this.
use the griddle idea with a sheet of tinfoil on it so that it gets warm/hot and then use crayons to draw with as they melt. they slide around and the colors look magical as they melt while drawing on the foil.
also fun is grating old crayon stubs and ironing them between sheets of wax paper. sort of looks like stained glass. or cut them into butterfly shapes for magic looking wings.
I got the link to this post from Heather at Shivaya Naturals. What a great idea. And I love your last line. Ezra + hot wax = disaster. I have a kid or two like that. 🙂
We tried it yesterday with Micaela and she was delighted.I leave a post on my Spanish blog today talking about it. You can see our experience there .http://depapeldechocolate.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/una-hornada-de-colores/Many thanks for the tutorial, it's really nice!Take care,:)
Very clever! I have an old muffin tin ~ It will be perfect for this! And my kids will love doing this. I'm not very good at crafts with them, but this looks easy enough!
That artist woman blog has a lot of wonderful craft/art ideas to do with kids. Many of them seem to be pretty easy to do.
Hooray for your new computer! Hooray for your new posts! 😉 My mind works the same way when it comes to craft/art projects! (and curriculum mentality, too, for that matter…) So keep these helpful idea posts coming! Thanks, Ginny— and beautiful visual aids, as always.
What a great project! Finally a use for old and broken crayons. We are thundering here right now so I'm going to shut down my computer for safety sake. But it does look like the kids had a ball both at the park and at the coloring session. Bye!
That is a great craft! I'll try it next time we are cleaning out all the broken crayons!
GREAT idea!!
Are you familiar with Catholic Heritage Curricula? They have some amazing ideas and materials (particularly in Religion).Also, when I was homeschooling I REALLY loved that art program that used postcards. There are so many cool activities for all ages….all the way from identifying and discoursing on art history and style down to simply matching.
That is an aewsome idea!! I'll have to try that.
Wow! I LOVE this idea! We are definitely saving this one for a rainy/snowy day! 🙂 I'm so glad you posted!