Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Easy Peasy Toddler Crayons


Fact: Regular crayons in the hands of a toddler are toast.

Fact: Larger "specialty" toddler crayons cost a small fortune or your first born to purchase.

Myth: I will either have to deal with broken crayons or pay lotsa moola (or my first born) for toddler crayons

Not so my peeps. Herd up all them broken crayons and turn your ovens to 300 degrees and by golly, we'll make us some toddler crayons!

Step 1. Turn your oven to 300 degrees. Find and "old" mini muffin pan and either spray with non-stick spray or line with foil. Cute little mini muffin liners may be used if you are so inclined.


Step 2. Have your children or yourself peel away all paper from broken crayons and break into small pieces. This is the ONLY time in your child's life he will be allowed to break crayons. Let him proceed with reckless abandon.
Crayola really does work best for this. Cheapie crayons don't. Period. If using Crayola, hold crayon to nose and inhale deeply. Ahhh, Crayola goodness. Just brings back memories of 4th grade, huh?
Step 3. Divide crayons amongst muffin hole thingies. You can just throw colors in randomly if your that wild and crazy kinda mom OR you can put them in according to color if you really want this to be a learning experience for your toddler. Then he can learn his colors while scribbling, but not before putting the crayon to his nose (or up it, whatever floats his boat) and inhaling deeply. Ahhh, Crayola goodness.

(Just for the record, I am more of the wild and crazy mom and certainly would have mixed my colors, but I gave birth to a very anal daughter 14 years ago and she insisted on separating by color. She can also do math. Unlike me.)

Step 4. Put muffin pan into oven for approximately 5 minutes. These do not take long at all to melt. Once they are melted, pull the pan from the oven and begin to wait. I stuck mine in the fridge because I'm not a very patient woman at all. Even though it's a virtue and everything, I just do not excel in the patience area. I don't pray for it eit
her because we all know what happens when we do that!


When these have sufficiently cooled then they can be removed from the muffin hole thingies (so, what are the holes called?!!) Foil and liners make this a little easier. If you just sprayed your pan then life becomes a little more interesting. You must take a sharp object, a knife would be good, and go around the edges and sort of pry ease them out. If you've sprayed your pan well, they will come out. I promise. There should be no wailing and gnashing of teeth involved in this process.
Do y'all notice how the brown one looks like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup? Well. It's not. Trust me. Although, you could put it up to your nose and inhale deeply. Ahhh, Crayola goodness.

Want more interesting ideas and tips? Head over to Rocks In My Dryer and check things out.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love it! We're so trying this.

Llama Momma said...

What a great idea!

Courtney said...

Great idea & cute blog!

Christy@pipandsqueak said...

Great Idea.

mindi said...

The kids and I did this with fall colors and shaped muffin tins (hearts). They came out awesome!
Oh, I want your pumpkin muffin recipe!

Anonymous said...

Going to get the box of broken crayons right now. The hole-y things are called cups, and What in the world were you doing up at 6 AM?

Jedi Miller said...

For some reason I picture Issac walking by and saying those are the worst tasting brownies ever...

I want a reese peanut butter cup now...

MamaGeek @ Works For Us said...

Wow, now THAT's CLEVER!! Thanks!

TexasTanya said...

We will be trying this soon! Thanks for the tip!

Mandy said...

That is amazing!!! I love it. Best idea I've seen all day! Thanks so much!

Michelle said...

Wow. Glad everyone liked the idea.

Mindi,
I will post the recipe soon. It's basically a pumpkin bread recipe and I just throw in chocolate chips.

Sarah,
Do you honestly think I was up at 6 am? I did it at midnight last night and changed the date to post for today. Now my secret has been revealed. Of course, I could have let you believe I was up at 6am typing just so you could stand in awe of me. HA!

Jedi,
You're probably right. I'm sure he sniffed them this morning making sure they weren't some sort of food product. Instead he smelled that Crayola goodness!

Unknown said...

So how do you get the toddler to stop EATING the crayons?

Hugs,
Melinda

Anonymous said...

This is FABULOUS!!!! And we have some little cousins who would think these were a WONDERFUL Christmas gift!
Thanks!

Christ in the Chaos said...

i love it!

carly said...

thank you so much!!!!
I was searching for big crayons and found you...I used the pan I got from a frozen puff pastry...sprayed it like you suggested, and the crayons came out with no problem. my little guy loves them and he is loving putting them in and out of the tray too. I had so much fun making them, mixing the colors...it was so fast too!! Sarah is so right, these would make great presents! Maybe a bunch of reds and pinks for valentines day??

Take Care!!

Momof4 said...

I did it! I finally made Easy Peasy Toddler Crayons! I bookmarked this page last Oct. when I found your blog during the Fall Ya'll Bloggy Giveaways. Today I finally got motivated enough to strip the paper off our broken Crayolas. My 5 y.o. was a big help with it, but so slow that I had to do most of the peeling. My 3 3/4 y.o. lost interest in stripping the papers off, pretty quickly. Now my 2 y.o. DS is loving the big, new crayons. He's having as much fun stacking them like blocks, as he is coloring with them.

Thanks for the idea!

Anonymous said...

I did these today and I got sooo tired of peeling the crayons so what I did was soak them in a bowl of water and the paper pretty much fell right off!!!! my daughter loves these crayons