Tutorial for making an Earth Crayon.

Mother Earth is having a birthday! It is on Wednesday the 22nd of April. We are celebrating Mother Earth's Birthday by doing all sorts of Earthy crafts. While we make our craft, we talk about all the ways we are thankful for Mother Earth. Discuss all the things she so generously gives us. And the little things we can do to protect her and keep her safe and healthy.

Today, we made an Earth Crayon. It is gorgeous... there is something SO wonderfully tactile about wax, it is smooth and shiny and oh so visually pleasing. Don't you just want to hold our wax Earth? Rub it in your hand, smell it?

This is what you need to make your own;

• blue and green crayons - about 15 or more of each (Mr T has a horrid habit of throwing our crayons and breaking them, so we have heaps of broken ones... Plus, I haven't been able to resist buying crayons at the dollar store... they NEVER draw nicely so we used these)
  
• coffee cups that can withstand the heat of going into the oven.
• plastic spoons that you can throw away.
• the bottom half of plastic easter eggs - 2 (ours had little holes in the bottom so we taped these up)
• a small wad of playdough, blue tack or sticky tape.

Separate the blue and green crayons from the crayon pack. Peel the paper off the blue and green crayons. (I think we started a new obsession for Mr T... perhaps he will just peel his crayons from now on and not throw them... here's to hoping as both K and I are tired of all the broken crayons in our house!)

Break them and put the green crayons in a cup and the blue crayons in another cup.

Put the cups on  a cookie sheet and pop them into the hot oven until all the crayons are melted (about 10 minutes).

While your crayons are melting in the oven, set out your round bottoms of easter eggs. I secured them on the counter using some playdough (best recipe ever, here) from the fridge. Blue tack would work too as would sticky tape.


When the crayons are melted, spoon them into the secured egg bottoms. We did a spoonful of green, then one of blue, then one of green and so on until our whole egg bottom was full. The melted crayon is HOT so please be careful.
This is what it looks like. Let crayon mixture cool (we couldn't wait long enough for the crayon halves to cool naturally so we popped them into the fridge to speed things up)

When crayon halves are cool, use a knife to gently pry them out of the egg bottoms... you have two lovely half circles. 

This part is for the mommies only... put tin foil over a cookie sheet or cake tin. Put on the stove burner to heat. It only takes a few seconds. 

When foil is hot, rub the flat surface of both crayon halves quickly on the foil to melt their wax bottoms. Join the two flat halves together... the melted wax from both will join together to create your crayon globe. 

It is lovely and looks just like the Earth. We discussed how littering causes trash to wash into the rivers and then into the beautifully blue sea. We will take care to throw our litter into the recycling.