With Earth Day coming up, I was looking for a craft activity to do with my kids. So the kids and I set out to make our own crayons shaped like Earth. Best of all, as we made our Earth crayons the kids got to practice so many wonderful skills!
Sorting skills: We started by sorting through our crayons to pick out the blue and green crayons.
Fine motor skills: Then all three of us got to work peeling the paper off the crayons. This was challenging even for me! But in the end, both kids and I managed to peel some paper.
From there, we put the peeled crayons into plastic baggies. The blue crayons went into one baggie and the green went into another baggie.
Fine motor skills: I gave the kids a lightweight hammer, and we headed outside to smash the crayons into smaller pieces. They loved this part!
We started on the grass, where I put a rock under the baggie and had the kids start hammering.
But when I saw that (1) this was tricky for them because the crayons kept sliding off the rock, and (2) they weren’t hitting the bags all that hard anyway, we moved to the concrete and they continued hammering away. (If my kids were hammering with more power, I would not have let them hammer on the concrete due to the damage they could have caused.)
Science: After our crayons had been broken into small bits, we went back inside. I pulled up a picture of what the earth looks like from outerspace, and we talked about how the water looks blue and the land looks green. We also talked about how there is more blue (water) than green (land) on our planet.
After this discussion, the kids sprinkled the blue and green crayon bits into some paper cupcake liners. We talked about using more blue than green to make it look like the earth.
Science: I put the filled cupcake liners on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. After preheating the oven to 200 degrees, we put them into the oven for eight minutes and watched as the crayons melted.
The crayons cooled quickly once they came out of the oven, and voila! We had earth crayons just in time for Earth Day!
More Earth Day resources
More Earth Day posts from Gift of Curiosity:
- Books about Earth Day
- Ideas for celebrating Earth Day
- Activities inspired by Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax
- Earth Day Do-a-Dot Printables
- Earth Day Bingo
For more Earth Day activities, see my Earth Day Activities page and my Earth Day Pinterest board!
Cathy says
April 18, 2013 at 5:33 pmVery cool idea with lots of new learning and skill development.
Seemi says
April 19, 2013 at 8:17 amThese turned out great! This is a really fun and creative idea our students would really like.
Julie says
April 20, 2013 at 1:20 pmThe crayons look great and this looks like a great activity. Watching them melt must have been very exciting.
Lori says
April 20, 2013 at 2:15 pmGreat idea! My daughter and I made these today, and they turned out pretty well. I hope she will enjoy using them too. Thanks!
Katie says
April 20, 2013 at 3:43 pmSo glad to hear they turned out well! Enjoy using them!
Savannah says
April 24, 2013 at 4:43 amThe minute I saw that this craft included a hammer I knew it would be a success. My son thinks those are the best crafts! I shared it on Facebook and Pinned it too.
Savannah says
April 24, 2013 at 4:44 amPlease consider adding this to Look What We Did…I am hoping to create a feature from there on Earth Day activities.
Katie says
April 24, 2013 at 3:09 pmHammers do have a way of making just about anything more fun, don’t they? 🙂
Carrie says
April 26, 2013 at 1:09 pmWhat a great idea!! We have done melted crayons for different shapes, but I love the idea of doing earth ones. Thank you for sharing on Sharing Saturday!
Ticia says
April 26, 2013 at 1:13 pmWe did this once, only we did Valentine’s colors and melted them in heart molds. The kids loved it.
Thanks for linking up to Science Sunday!
jaime@FSPDT says
April 26, 2013 at 6:02 pmthese came out great and i love that the kids broke up the crayons with a hammer. thanks for the link back! Jaime@FSPDT
Katie says
April 26, 2013 at 8:38 pmThank you for stopping by, and especially for the inspiration for the activity!
Hannah says
April 30, 2013 at 4:29 amThose crayons rock! I had no idea they could be made in paper liners. I might make them more often now! lol
Tracey@We-Made-That says
April 30, 2013 at 7:42 amThese turned out great! Thanks for sharing on We Made That!