The broken crayon is the bane of my craft box. If you’re int he same boat as me it’s time to collect all those broken bits and get to crafting.
My kids have wanted to do the “painted rocks” art and leave them on our local trails for awhile now. The issue is all the paint we have is kids washable (for good reason!). So unless I seal the rocks the paint will wash away in the first rain.
Enter the humble broken crayon.
We had already collected rocks from a different walk (my kids are always finding special rocks). I placed them in a 350 degree oven on a cookie sheet for about 5 minutes to heat them up. If you’re kids are really young it’s important that the rocks don’t tip around too much otherwise the kids are tempted to grab the rock and they could get burnt.
BE CAREFUL!! I had to seriously stress to my kids that the rocks were hot and could burn them. We didn’t have any issues.
I set the hot rocks on a piece of paper to collect any drippy wax and let the kids start coloring with the crayons. I showed them how if they hold the crayon still you can make a wax puddle. Another technique is to use the white crayon (which never gets used) to create a marble-like effect. I let them experiment and have fun.
Once the rocks were totally cooled off we took another trail walk and left them for others to find or move along the trail. They are already looking for the rocks they’d like to color on next. But that’s for another day’s walk.
Happy Questing!
Quest Type 