Almost a year ago I posted how we recycled crayons using the stove top. This time I wanted to try the oven. Much easier! This activity can be done almost entirely by your preschooler. The adult just helps with the oven part of the process.
No matter how you melt the crayons, remove the paper and sort the crayons by colors (unless you are going to mix the colors).
We placed the crayons in a muffin pan. The first time I did this, I used paper cupcake holders. Not a good choice. It was a mess trying to get the paper off. I ended up re-melting them once I got the paper off. I think aluminum cupcake holders would work better as they wouldn’t tear like the paper ones – but I haven’t tried this yet.
Muffin pans make simple round recreations. You can make any shape you desire with various molds– hearts, legos, flower, crayons, stars, etc. Be sure that the mold is oven safe.
If you prefer to mix the colors (as the hearts pictured above), place the broken crayons in the mold.
Place the crayons in a 250 degree oven and wait. Because different brands of crayons are made of different ingredients, the crayons will melt at varying speeds. If one color, once the crayons are totally melted I suggest using a toothpick to stir the colors together. With multiple colors, once melted swirl with a tooth pick. Do not over swirl and mix the colors or you will get a brown-gross-mess color.
The crayon material contracts as it gets cold making the new crayons easy to pop out of the muffin tin. We put ours in the freezer for a while to speed up the process.
These new crayons make fun, unique gifts for birthday parties, holidays, or stocking stuffers. My son, Bubs, actually made a set of these for one of his friends. He was so incredibly proud to hand them over, knowing he had created them all by himself.
