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Making Crayons

I bought a Suze Weinberg melting pot and my first project was making crayons.  I was in a hurry at the craft store and just grabbed a star shaped candy mold. Check out the process...

  I've been a Kindergarten teacher for 5 years and my crayon tub had tons of little crayon 'nubbins' at the bottom.  My current kindergartners even dug through their school boxes and gave me their broken crayons.  :)  My fingers got sore from tearing off paper, so I dug up a box knife and made a slit down each crayon.  This made it much easier!

My melting pot is in the off position in this picture.  When you plug it in, the green light on the right will come on and that means you have power.  Then you move the red slider button to the right for your temperature.  I just guessed this time and set it to about 220 degrees.  I placed my crayons inside and then placed the lid on top.  (When you place the lid on, it helps to heat faster)

   

Starting to melt...so much fun!

All the crayons have melted.  It just takes a couple of minutes to melt.  I left it turned on so it could still be heating between pouring.   

 

I'm pouring the melted crayons into a candy mold that has different sizes of stars.  I really didn't know if it would work with a candy mold...

My husband was my cameraman.  (Thanks, honey!)

 

I wasn't very happy with how it poured.  I'm sure I just need practice.  It wanted to run all over the place.

 

I decided to throw some purple crayons in...

 

And here are the cute little crayons!  I made some green ones, too, and I gave all my students a crayon.  They thought it was the coolest thing.  We've been studying recycling in Science and this was another great way to show recycling to them.  I plan to make them heart shaped crayons for Valentine's Day.  Fun, fun!!  

Melting Snowman

      Our principal wanted each class to make ornaments for the Christmas tree in the cafeteria.  I found a melting snowman ornament online that required hot glue.  I wasn't too crazy about using hot glue with the kids and was just sure the white Elmer's glue would work.  I figured I could just put on some foil, add my beads and pipe cleaner nose and let it dry all day.  Well, the shelf I placed it on is apparently not level and this is what I discovered later in the day.  Thankfully, it stopped at the edge of the shelf and didn't pour down on any backpacks!!  I snapped a picture and then quickly cleaned up the mess.  :)  So, I opted to use the hot glue and our ornaments turned out really cute.  Just a random moment from my life...thanks for reading!!  :-) 

Interesting Flea Market Find

     My husband and I were at a flea market a few years ago and I came across a box of wood mounted stamps.  They said things like 'Dog Patch Trading Post' and 'Sheperd of the Hills'...I didn't know what to make of them.  The only thing I could think was that they were used to stamp boxes or bags from gift shops.  So, I bought them, stashed them away, and decided to finally pull them out and do something with them.  That's my question...what should I do with them??    

 

 

Sweet Looking Sweet Potato!

                                 

     I'm a kindergarten teacher and we've been studying about plants.  This is a picture of one of our experiments.  We placed toothpicks in this sweet potato and placed it in the water so that only a couple of inches of the potato were submerged.  We started this experiement on September 3rd and just within the last week it has done this.  Isn't it amazing!!!  The first picture was taken on Sept. 24th and the second picture was taken today.  I think I'm more excited than the kids!  :)  I just had to share this with you.  I'm going to try to keep it going all year.  I can't wait to see what happens.  (be sure to click on each picture for a closer look!)