crayons Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Building Numbers with Crayon STEM Task Cards

August 15, 2018 By Deirdre

This is the third in my STEM task card series Building with Crayons. The first set of STEM task cards focused on alphabet letters. The second set of STEM task cards invites kids to explore shapes. This set focus on creating the numbers one to ten.

I love to read books related to the concepts my children will be exploring. It helps them to activate the prior knowledge they have about a concept or build new knowledge. Below you will find some of my favorite children’s books about numbers.

Getting the STEM Task Cards Ready

You can download a free set of the Learning Numbers with Crayons Printable Task Cards. Then you can open up the set in Acrobat Reader. The task cards were designed to be printed out on cardstock using a color printer.

Once you have printed the task cards out, you can cut each page in half.

Explore the Number Task Cards with Crayons

While your children can build each number with the colors of crayons displayed on the card, they don’t have too. You can have them select any color of crayon they like to form each number. The goal of this activity is to have your children identify each number and then build it.

Children can build the numbers on or beside the card. If you choose to have your children build them on the card, it is okay if they don’t fit perfectly on top of the crayons.

Some children may ask why the numbers on the cards don’t have rounded areas. Crayons are rigid and don’t bend. I tried to create numbers that look as close to traditional numbers as possible.

If you like this number activity, here are more activities your children will love.

Building an Algorithm While Sequencing Numbers

Muffin Tin Math Activity- Dinosaurs Walking on Numbers

Creating Numbers in Shadows

3 Types of Rocks Modeled With Crayons

August 16, 2017 By Deirdre

During Geology week a few weeks ago, I shared with you how to make igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock cookie and candy recipes to create with your kids. My son and I also created 3 types of rocks modeled with crayons that week. Since the other activities involved explorations that were edible, I set this activity aside to share with your late.

This week I am sharing STEM science experiments that use school supplies. Now seems to be the better time to share this 3 types of rocks activity with you.

Creating 3 Types of Rocks Activity

Let me warn you they hardest or rather the most tedious part of this activity is creating the crayon shavings. It takes a little time to get enough for this experiment. I worked on creating them while watching television one night.

Supplies

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Pencil Sharpener for Colored/Graphite Pencils and Crayons
silver foil bake cups
Spoons
Popsicle Sticks
Water
Large Cup or Bowl
Old Crayon Shavings

Creating the Sedimentary Rock

Of the 3 types of rocks, this is the easiest to put together. Your children will need to scoop several different colors of crayon shavings into a foil baking cup or cupcake liner.Then they will need to fold the liner in half. Next, they will need to hold it between their hands or sit on it.

The heat from their bodies will start to melt the shavings into each other. Then set the liner aside for a few minutes to cool. Sedimentary rock is formed when tiny particles are layered and then compressed.

Creating the Metamorphic Rocks

Metamorphic rocks are created when rocks are exposed to heat or pressure. This exploration uses hot that has come to boil. Children will need to have supervision while they create metamorphic rocks with the crayon shavings.

Your children will scoop a variety of different colors of shavings into a foil baking cup. Then they will set the cup into a bowl or cup filled with hot water.

They will need to leave the cup in the water for only about 15 seconds or until the shavings start to melt. Then lift the cup from the cup or bowl and set it on a flat surface. (You may need to this for your children if you are worried about them touching the water.)

If you want to you can have them fold the liner in half and compress the shavings to add pressure. We left ours as they melted.

Creating Igneous Rocks

Igneous rocks are formed when molten lava or magma hardened. This exploration also uses hot water that has come to a boil. Children will need to have supervision while they create igneous rocks with the crayon shavings.

Your children can scoop a variety of different shaving colors into the foil cups. Then they will place them in the hot water that has been poured into a cup or bowl.

They will leave the liner in the bowl for a full minute. Then the cup or liner can be removed.

Your children can then stir the mixture with a popsicle stick to make sure it is blended. Then set it aside to harden.

Your children are going to love making 3 kinds of rocks with crayons!

Sandpaper and Crayon Art Iron On Transfers

June 18, 2015 By Deirdre

Last year one of the craft projects the kids did at my church’s vacation bible school was to create sandpaper and crayon art iron on transfers. Each child brought a white shirt and their drawing was transferred by a volunteer onto it. I thought it would be fun do this craft at home and create 4th of July crayon drawings for shirts. As you can see from the collage above and the picture below, JDaniel and I both created very different drawings to celebrate the 4th.

Let me walk you through how we crafted our 4th of July shirts. They are so easy to make. I know you are going to want to make shirts of your own for all kinds of holidays and events.

We Started with Crayon Art

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Everyday waxed crayons were used to draw on 100 medium sandpaper. (I love Crayola crayons for crafts. ) The most important part of creating crayon art that will transfer is to color darkly by pressing down hard with your crayon. That means coloring each area over and over again.

We did free hand coloring and coloring inside a star shaped cookie cutter. (A cookie cutter made a great template.) When you do this craft you can use templates, cookie cutters or just have your kids draw.

We talked about the symbols of our country before starting the project! Your kids could really place anything they think celebrates the 4th of July on their sandpaper. One of us decided to have dinosaur as part of our design. I think it was a brilliant idea. The design show U.S. symbols and something that interests it artist. It is so important that children feel they can express themselves when they create and not have to make a rigid design.

Hint: It is a good idea to tell children that the pictures will be reversed when they are transferred to their shirt. My son’s flag came out on his shirt backwards. I flipped the picture of the shirt when I edited the picture.

Moving the Crayon Art To The Shirt

When we finished our pictures on the sandpaper, I heated up the iron to a high heat. The shirt was placed on a pad with a cloth placed on it.

Then the crayon art was placed face down on the shirt. I placed our transfers up to high on the shirts. When we do this again, I will place them more towards the center of the shirt.

We set a timer for three minutes and then I started ironing. I held the iron in place for a few seconds over each area of the sandpaper to start with. Then I went back and forth across it. When the timer stared dinging, I lifted the iron off of the transfer.

Hint: An ironing board is probably a better choice. We will use one next time we do this project.

The transfer was left on the shirt for a couple of second and then we peeled it off. Voila! We had really cool shirts personally designed by us! They will be such fun to wear on the 4th of July, Veterans Day and next Memorial Day!

Hint: Placing your shirt in a dryer on a low heat will help your design set.

If you like this patriotic craft idea, you may like these too.

Flag Mobile

Cardboard Tube Flag

Fold and Thread Necklace

Patriotic Confetti Eggs

Painted Flag

If you create sandpaper and crayon art iron on transfers, please take a picture of them and share them with me. You can share them on my Facebook page.

Melting Crayons- LEGO Treat Bag Idea

February 2, 2015 By Deirdre

Melting Crayons- LEGO Treat Bag Idea

Have you ever seen those homemade crayon pictures on Pinterest? You know the ones made my melting your old crayons. Well, I have and I decided to make some for my son to take to school for Valentine’s Day along with the LEGO Valentine’s cards I made in treat bags. After searching the internet for the very best way to make them, I decided to try two and see which one worked the best.

Melting Crayons- LEGO treat bag idea

JDaniel helped me prepare the crayons to be cast into a new shape by taking off each crayon’s paper wrapper. We have a bag of broken crayons that I thought would be easy for us to remove the wrappers from. It was challenging to say the least. Some of the wrappers on the older or on really cheap crayons. They came off easily. The wrappers of the new crayons were tough. We tried scraping our finger nails from an outside edge down. That was not super effective. Then we tried scraping a section of the wrapper with the inside edge of a pair of scissors very carefully that worked.

Next the crayons that were whole needed to be broken into small pieces so that would melt easily. We broke many by hand. I used a dull knife to break the challenging crayons. Melting Crayons- LEGO treat bag idea

The first approach involved an empty metal can and a pot of boiling water. The post said to place the crayons in a can that had small spout bent into it. Then place the can in a pot of boiling water. We found that when there was a lot of water in the pot the can tended to tip over. With only a little water in the post the can jumped around.

The crayons did melt or some of them did. I was able to pour some of the melted crayons into a LEGO ice cube tray I had purchased. Some of the crayon stuck to the bottom of the can and froze solid there.

Since I didn’t need a can with crayons coating the inside, we stopped this method. Thank goodness there was a second method to try.

The oven method was super easy and super-fast to do. All we had to do was place several broken crayon of the same color into each ice cube section. It was important to fill each section to the top. (When we didn’t, we ended up with thin crayons that broke in half when we tried to get them out.)

Melting Crayons- LEGO treat bag idea

The silicone trays were placed on an old cookie sheet in 250 degree oven for ten minutes. After ten minutes, I carefully lifted the tray out of the oven and set them on the counter. The crayons in the ice cube trays were in liquid form.

Melting Crayons- Lego Treat Bag Idea

I left them on the counter for an hour and half to let them cool. Some directions I read for making homemade crayons said to put them in the freezer. I didn’t have room in my freezer so; the counter was the only option.

Melting Crayons- Lego Treat Bag Idea

To get the homemade crayons out of the olds I pushed them gently from the outside while holding the trays upside down. Molds without a lot of detail probably won’t be so tricky to work with. I didn’t want to break any of the bumps on the LEGOS so, I pushed very gently.

JDaniel and I both think that they turned out well. The homemade crayons will be fun for him to pass out in class on Valentine’s Day.

Here are some other melting crayons into new crayons ideas that I love:

Heart Shaped Crayon from Things I Can’t Say

Traditional Muffin Tin Crayons from Hands On- As We Grow

Sun Melted Recycled Crayons from No Time for Flashcards

Love and Marriage made Snowman Crayons

Melting Crayons- Lego Treat Bag Idea

If you try or have tried melting crayons to make new fun crayons with your kids, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

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